A social-media diplomatic exchange has unexpectedly staged a riveting "contrast of two approaches in diplomacy" for a global audience. One side: a composed Chinese diplomat dismantling lies with the wisdom of a fable. The other: a flustered American official playing out an absurd scene — a mob boss handing down an ultimatum.
The incident began as a textbook case of American-style coercion. On 17 April, US Ambassador to Peru Navarro issued a blunt social-media warning to the Peruvian government: close the deal of the purchase of 12 F-16 fighter jets, or face US retaliatory measures.
He declared — with a self-righteous flourish — that he would "use every available tool" to protect American interests. Strip away the diplomatic veneer, and the crude logic and overbearing tone bear a striking resemblance to a mafia boss demanding protection money. This was no diplomatic consultation. It was naked economic and political extortion.
China's Ambassador to Colombia, Zhu Jingyang, responded with equal directness. His assessment cut to the bone: "This is not diplomatic language — it is naked, blunt, and brutal coercion." When Navarro then attempted to turn the tables by likening China to the Big Bad Wolf in Little Red Riding Hood, Ambassador Zhu's retort left him with nowhere to hide. "Dear colleague, when you describe the Big Bad Wolf in Little Red Riding Hood," Zhu shot back, "aren't you looking in a mirror?"
He pressed further: "You shout 'free choice' but wave the stick of sanctions; you play the 'mature country' but resort to cheap mockery... With this, you only make it crystal clear who the real Big Bad Wolf is."
The contrast in this exchange could not be starker. On one side stands a coercive power brandishing a big stick and talking of "retaliatory measures" — deploying brute force to protect its arms business. On the other stands a party upholding the principles of mutual respect and equal treatment, affirming Peru's sovereign right to choose its own partners free from intimidation.
Ambassador Zhu captured the essence of the righteous path: "True strength does not require the fangs of a fairy tale — it requires vision and wisdom." This was not merely a forceful rebuttal of baseless accusations. It was a profound articulation of what it means for a major power to act with responsibility.
China's diplomats demonstrated a wholly different bearing. Rather than relying on intimidation or smears, they made their case with reason and navigated the situation with wisdom — steadfastly upholding the fundamental norms of international relations.
That confidence and composure spring from a belief in their own path of development, and from an unwavering commitment to the Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence. This "long-distance dialogue" may have drawn to a temporary close, but the lessons it leaves behind are well worth reflecting upon.
Ambassador Navarro's conduct comes as no surprise. His boss, Trump, has taken the gangster act to a new level entirely.
In the early hours of 29 April (local time), US President Trump posted on his Truth Social platform stating that “Iran can’t get their act together. They don’t know how to sign a nonnuclear deal.” Furthermore, it says “They better get smart soon!” Accompanying this condescending text was an AI-generated image: Trump himself holding an assault rifle, sporting dark sunglasses, with explosions and rubble in the background. Emblazoned above in bold letters: "NO MORE MR. NICE GUY."
Reducing complex geopolitical realities to street-gang intimidation is absurd enough. The specific context makes it more so. At the time of Trump's post, shipping through the critical Strait of Hormuz remained severely disrupted. US-Iran negotiations had stalled, and a scheduled round of talks had been cancelled. On one hand, Trump cancels meetings and shuts down dialogue. On the other, he posts gun imagery on social media and tells Tehran to "get smart." This self-contradictory behaviour is less a form of diplomatic pressure than a carefully staged political reality show — whose primary audience is almost certainly not Tehran, but Trump's domestic base.
When a head of state chooses, in the small hours of the morning, to issue an "ultimatum" to another sovereign nation via an AI-generated image of himself posing with a gun on social media, what we are witnessing is not an escalation of diplomatic strategy. It is a complete downgrade of the art of international communication.
The reality is that this "gangster-style" rhetoric amounts to a crude trampling of the fundamental norms of international relations. It substitutes virtual images of violence for serious policy discourse. It replaces negotiation through diplomatic channels with social-media bluster. At its core lies the same tired logic of "might makes right" — as though the world were still a jungle where whoever shouts the loudest and looks the most menacing gets to call the shots.
Beacon Institute
** 博客文章文責自負,不代表本公司立場 **
Paris's mercury shot up like a rocket with no brakes in June, blowing past 44°C. The Louvre cut its opening hours and the Eiffel Tower baked in the heat. More than 3,000 primary and secondary schools were forced to close.
Meanwhile, at Paris's funeral homes, phones rang every few minutes, with each caller asking the same question: "Is there any space left for another body?"
Funeral home director Zouhaeir Hertelli's phone would not stop ringing. "We have no solution to offer them," he said, "We're completely full." To free up space, he had to transport some bodies to Chartres, 80 kilometers away. He even applied to the government for permission to place temporary refrigerated containers outside the funeral home. That application is still under review.
The numbers from France's public health agency are even more disheartening. In just three days, from June 23 to 25, excess deaths nationwide totaled around 1,000. June 23 set a new record for the highest temperature since France began keeping weather records, surpassing even the 2003 heatwave of the century that killed 15,000 people.
It was at this exact moment that France's Minister for Ecological Transition, Monique Barbut, stepped forward.
Barbut spoke publicly at the Paris Air Quality Monitoring Center on June 26. She said she was "horrified" to hear public calls for widespread air conditioning. Air conditioning, she argued, was never a fundamental solution to the climate crisis. Mass installation of AC units could neither curb forest fires nor save wildlife populations. "This is not adaption to global warming," she said, "this is an emergency measure."
Her words landed on the French public like a bucket of cold water poured over their heads in 40-degree heat. Well, except the water was scalding hot.
Public fury ignited instantly. Fewer than 25% of French households have air conditioning. Public schools have AC coverage below 7%, and countless nursing homes and community clinics still lack even basic cooling equipment. Emergency room temperatures have long hovered near 40°C, leaving critically ill patients with no way to recover safely. For elderly people living alone, low-income families, and tenants crammed into old Haussmann-era buildings, air conditioning isn't a luxury. It's the last line of defense keeping them alive.
But the real spectacle was yet to come.
Members of the public went digging and found that the government office buildings housing Minister Barbut's office, the Séquoia Tower and La Défense's Grande Arche, were already fully equipped with central air conditioning. She lectured at climate summits about carbon-neutral emissions targets from a cooled office. At the same time, she called ordinary citizens' desire for air conditioning "horrifying". She claimed AC was merely an "emergency measure" rather than a long-term adaptation strategy, yet let her own cool breeze become an everyday fixture.
A textbook definition of a "double standard." Long-term ecological goals are meant to constrain ordinary people, while immediate comfort is reserved for oneself.
The public backlash came fast and hard. Within just two days, France's health authorities scrambled to finalize a procurement plan, allocating 30,000 air conditioning units on a priority basis to public hospitals, nursing homes, and schools. Paris's city government simultaneously procured over a thousand cooling units. This policy U-turn resembled an actor caught off guard, frantically fixing their makeup after being slapped on stage. Except the price of this particular performance was over a thousand lives already lost.
The absurdity of this whole episode isn't that environmental ideals are inherently wrong. The arguments from France's Green Party and left-wing camp aren't entirely without merit. Old buildings have poor insulation, AC condenser units worsen the urban heat island effect, and cooling cities requires ecological solutions rather than simply relying on electric cooling. These are all genuine technical challenges.
The problem arises when "long-term planning" is invoked to dismiss the most urgent needs of ordinary people right now. That's when environmentalism stops being public policy and becomes class rhetoric instead.
The long-standing "consensus" in French society, that urban cooling should rely on ecological retrofitting rather than air conditioning, is at its core a consensus of the propertied class. Homeowners who can afford exterior wall insulation upgrades, families with the resources to escape to summer retreats, and officials with the power to enjoy central air conditioning in their offices can of course afford to speak elegantly about "ecological adaptation."
But for tenants crammed into uninsulated old stone buildings, elderly people living alone in retirement, or medical staff toughing it out in emergency rooms with nothing but reflective sun shields and aging fans, the phrase "long-term planning" is just another way of saying, "you'll just have to keep enduring it."
This is the truth behind the "cooling class." Cool air has a class hierarchy, and so does environmentalism.
Nearly 15,000 people in France died from heat-related causes in the 2003 heatwave, most of them elderly people living alone. The government at the time was criticized for its sluggish response and disregard for the vulnerable. Twenty-three years later, history has repeated itself almost exactly. The only difference is that the government's excuse has been upgraded from "negligence" to "environmentalism." From funeral homes overflowing to a minister's air-conditioned office, from 1,000 excess deaths to air conditioning being called "shocking," the distance between these two realities is merely a few floors' worth of height. Yet it separates two entirely different Frances.
The cool breeze still flows through Minister Barbut's office. Meanwhile, at the Paris funeral home, Hertelli is still waiting for approval on that refrigerated container. "Imagine your father's or mother's body has begun to decompose," he said, "and we're unable to take care of it, and we have no solution to offer them."
Perhaps that sentence is the most honest confession to emerge from this entire heatwave. When environmental slogans are used to mask governance failures, and when long-term planning is used to dodge questions of life and death happening right now, so-called "climate adaptation" becomes just another sophisticated way of shirking responsibility.
The real double standard was never as simple as "saying one thing and doing another." It's a system that grants some people the permanent right to talk about "the future," while ensuring others never get to see "the present."
Paris's summer still has a long way to go. But for some, there won't be a next summer.
