Biology:Paper tiger

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Short description: Chinese phrase for an ineffectual threat
For other uses, see Biology:Paper tiger (disambiguation).
A paper tiger with a U.S. flag, symbolizing The United States (China Pictorial, August 1950 issue)

"Paper tiger" is a calque of the Chinese phrase zhǐlǎohǔ (simplified Chinese: 纸老虎; traditional Chinese: 紙老虎). The term refers to something or someone that claims or appears to be powerful or threatening but is actually ineffectual and unable to withstand challenge.

The expression became well known internationally as a slogan used by Mao Zedong, former chairman of the Chinese Communist Party and paramount leader of China, against his political opponents, particularly the United States. It has since been used in various capacities and variations to describe many other opponents and entities.

Origin

Zhilaohu dates from at least the nineteenth century. Robert Morrison, the British missionary and lexicographer, translated the phrase as "a paper tiger" in Vocabulary of the Canton Dialect in 1828.[1][2] John Francis Davis translated the Chinese phrase as "paper tiger" in a book on Chinese history published in 1836.[3] In a meeting with Henry Kissinger in 1973, Mao Zedong claimed in a humorous aside to have coined the English phrase.[4]

Use

Mao Zedong first introduced his idea of paper tigers to Americans in an August 1946 interview with American journalist Anna Louise Strong:[5]

The atom bomb is a paper tiger which the U.S. reactionaries use to scare people. It looks terrible, but in fact it isn't. Of course, the atom bomb is a weapon of mass slaughter, but the outcome of a war is decided by the people, not by one or two new types of weapon. All reactionaries are paper tigers. In appearance, the reactionaries are terrifying, but in reality they are not so powerful.[6]

Mao Zedong's translator, who was skilled at English, initially translated "paper tiger" as "scarecrow" in an attempt to use a cultural reference point an American would understand. Mao realized something had been lost in translation, and asked if Strong knew what a paper tiger was; her reply was that it was an object used to scare birds in a field. Mao, switching to his heavily accented English, clarified that it was a "paper tiger".[7][8] Anna Louise Strong identifies the translator as Lu Dingyi in her 1948 memoir Tomorrow's China,[7] while some other sources instead identify Yu Guangsheng (zh) as the translator.[9][10]

In a 1956 interview with Strong, Mao used the phrase "paper tiger" to describe American imperialism again:

In appearance it is very powerful but in reality it is nothing to be afraid of; it is a paper tiger. Outwardly a tiger, it is made of paper, unable to withstand the wind and the rain. I believe that it is nothing but a paper tiger.[11]

In 1957, Mao reminisced about the original interview with Strong:

In an interview, I discussed many questions with her, including Chiang Kai-shek, Hitler, Japan, the United States and the atom bomb. I said all allegedly powerful reactionaries are merely paper tigers. The reason is that they are divorced from the people. Look! Wasn't Hitler a paper tiger? Wasn't he overthrown?[12]

In this view, "paper tigers" are superficially powerful but are prone to overextension that leads to sudden collapse. When Mao criticized Soviet appeasement of the United States during the Sino-Soviet split, Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev reportedly said, "the paper tiger has nuclear teeth".[13]

The discourse of Ruguanxue deems the United States as a paper tiger which appears to be strong and affluent but is in fact in decline.[14]: 7 

The term was frequently used in Chinese Internet discourse regarding the trade war begun by United States President Donald Trump.[15]: 94  Internet users referred to Trump as a paper tiger, frequently observing that the United States economy depends heavily on Chinese companies for a host of necessities, electronics, and raw components.[15]: 94–95 

Other uses

In The Resistance to Theory (1982), Paul de Man used the phrase to reflect upon the threat of literary theory to traditional literary scholarship in American academia. He said, "If a cat is called a tiger it can easily be dismissed as a paper tiger; the question remains however why one was so scared of the cat in the first place".[16]

The Little Red Schoolbook (1969) states, "all grown-ups are paper tigers". The book was controversial for instructing teenagers to challenge authority, and the quote was deemed its most famous.[17]

Osama bin Laden described U.S. soldiers as "paper tigers".[18][19] This statement may reflect the influence of Maoism on the formation of the Taliban.[20][21][22]

The phrase was used in a 2006 speech by then-United States Senator Joe Biden to describe North Korea after a series of missile launches from the country that same year, defying the warnings of the international community while still incapable of directly harming the United States.[23][24]

In 2025, Donald Trump used the phrase to dismiss Russia's conduct of Russo-Ukrainian war while delivering a speech at the United Nations.[25] He also used the phrase in March 2026 in reference to NATO not coming to the aid the U.S. during the 2026 Iran war.[26]

China itself has been called a paper tiger. In 2021, Michael Beckley argued in his book Unrivaled: Why America Will Remain the World’s Sole Superpower that China would not be able to overtake the United States, and that the belief that China is stronger than it really is is detrimental to American perceptions and policy. According to Beckley, this is because "China’s economic, financial, technological, and military strength is hugely exaggerated by crude and inaccurate statistics": for example, Beckley states that high-scoring Chinese education statistics are actually cherry-picked, that the People's Liberation Army is not as strong as the United States Armed Forces due to their differing focuses, and that China's large GDP does not equate to their actual strength or power.[27][28]

See also

  • Feet of clay
  • Straw dog
  • China's final warning

References

  1. ↑ Zimmer, Ben (2017-02-23). "The Chinese Origins of 'Paper Tiger'". The Wall Street Journal. https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-chinese-origins-of-paper-tiger-1487873046. 
  2. ↑ Morrison, Robert (1828). Vocabulary of the Canton Dialect. I. Macao: East India Company's Press. p. 536. https://books.google.com/books?id=udJUAAAAcAAJ&pg=PP536. 
  3. ↑ Davis, John Francis (1836). The Chinese: A General Description of the Empire of China and Its Inhabitants. II. London: Charles Knight & Co.. p. 163. OCLC 5720352. https://books.google.com/books?id=C8JJAAAAIAAJ&pg=PA163. "Some of the ordinary expressions of the Chinese are pointed and sarcastic enough. A blustering, harmless fellow they call 'a paper tiger.'" 
  4. ↑ "Memorandum of Conversation, Beijing, February 17–18, 1973, 11:30 p.m.–1:20 a.m.". http://nsarchive.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB90/dubious-10c.pdf. 
  5. ↑ Lary, Diana (2015). China's Civil War: A Social History, 1945–1949. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. p. 80. ISBN 978-1-107-05467-7. https://books.google.com/books?id=x2t2BgAAQBAJ&pg=PA80. 
  6. ↑ Mao, Zedong (August 1946). "Talk with the American Correspondent Anna Luise Strong". Selected Works of Mao Tse-Tung. IV. Peking: Foreign Languages Press. OCLC 898328894. https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/mao/selected-works/volume-4/mswv4_13.htm. 
  7. ↑ 7.0 7.1 Strong, Anna Louise (December 1948). Tomorrow's China. 111 West 42nd St., New York 18, New York: Committee for a Democratic Far Eastern Policy. pp. 38-39. https://www.bannedthought.net/China/Pre1949/WarOfLiberation/TomorrowsChina-ALStrong-1948.pdf. Retrieved December 7, 2025. ""Reactionary rulers," he said, "are paper tigers. Terrible to look at, but melting when the rains come." / The word "paper tiger" seemed to strike him; he stopped to be sure that I got its exact flavor. Lu Ting-yi, who was translating, gave the word as "scare-crow." Mao halted the talk and asked Lu what a scare-crow was. Then he refused the word. A paper tiger, he said, was not something dead stuck in a field. It scares not crows but children. It is made to look like a dangerous beast. But it is really only pressed paper which softens when damp. / After this explanation Mao continued, using the words "paper tiger" in English, laughing at his own pronunciation." 
  8. ↑ Wu, Jingjian (April 19, 2021). "When Diplomacy Is Lost in Translation". Beijing, China. https://www.theworldofchinese.com/2021/04/when-diplomacy-is-lost-in-translation/. 
  9. ↑ "1946: Jiěfàng zhànzhēng qiú jiěfàng——zhōngguó gòngchǎndǎng xiānmíng tíchū “yīqiè fǎndòngpài dōu shì zhǐlǎohǔ”" (in zh). March 29, 2021. https://www.mem.gov.cn/xw/ztzl/2021/dsxxjy/xxfd/202103/t20210329_382258.shtml. "Jùshuō, yīnwèi yīngyǔ de xíguàn yòngfǎ zhōng méiyǒu “zhǐlǎohǔ” zhège zǔhé cí, dāngshí de fānyì yú guāngshēng zài fānyì shí yòngle yīngyǔ zhòng lèisì de xíguàn yòngyǔ “dàocǎorén (Scarecrow)” lái dàitì. Máozédōng dé zhī hòu shuō:“Bùxíng, wǒ de yìsi shì zhǐ hú de lǎohǔ, shì Paper-Tiger. Shì yòng lái xiàhǔ háizǐ de, yàngzǐ kàn qǐlái kěpà, shíjì shang yī jiàn shuǐ jiù ruǎn, yī jiàn fēng jiù pò.” Tīngle máozédōng de yī fān jiěshì, sī tè lǎng bùjīn xiàole qǐlái." 
  10. ↑ Zhang, Qingmin (2011). "Yǐnyù, wèntí biǎozhēng yǔ máozédōng de duìwài zhèngcè" (in zh). Guójì zhèngzhì yánjiū (China Academic Journal Electronic Publishing House) (2). ISSN 1671-4709. https://www.sis.pku.edu.cn/teachers/docs/20190904131358533324.pdf. Retrieved December 7, 2025. "Yǒu yánjiū biǎomíng,1946 nián 8 yuè, měiguó nǚ jìzhě ānnà·lùyìsī·sī tè lǎng lái dào yán'ān zài cǎifǎng máo zhǔxí qíjiān, máozédōng shǒucì tíchūle yīqiè fǎndòngpài dōu shì zhǐlǎohǔ de guāndiǎn. Dāngshí dānrèn fānyì de yú guāngshēng xiānshēng shǐyòngle yīgè yīngwén guànyòng cí———Scare-crow(dàocǎorén) zuòwéi qí yīngwén yìwén. Máozédōng dāngshí jiù jiūzhèngle tā, shuō bu xíng, wǒ bùshì zhège yìsi, wǒ de yìsi shì zhǐ hú de lǎohǔ, shì Paper-tiger.". 
  11. ↑ Mao, Zedong (July 14, 1956). "U.S. Imperialism is a Paper Tiger". Selected Works of Mao Tse-Tung. V. Peking: Foreign Languages Press. http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/mao/selected-works/volume-5/mswv5_52.htm. 
  12. ↑ Mao, Zedong (November 18, 1957). "All Reactionaries Are Paper Tigers". Selected Works of Mao Tse-Tung. V. Peking: Foreign Languages Press. http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/mao/selected-works/volume-5/mswv5_70.htm. 
  13. ↑ "The World: What They Are Fighting About". Time 82 (2): 24–25. 12 July 1963. https://archive.org/details/time-1963-11-22/Time%201963-07-12/page/24/mode/2up. Retrieved 21 May 2010. 
  14. ↑ Han, Rongbin (2026). Make China Great Again: Online Alt-History Fiction and Popular Authoritarianism. New York: Columbia University Press. ISBN 978-0-231-22054-5. 
  15. ↑ 15.0 15.1 Marquis, Christopher; Qiao, Kunyuan (2022). Mao and markets the communist roots of Chinese enterprise. Kunyuan Qiao. New Haven: Yale University Press. ISBN 978-0-300-26883-6. OCLC 1348572572. 
  16. ↑ de Man, Paul (1986). The Resistance to Theory. Theory and History of Literature. 33. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. p. 5. ISBN 0-8166-1294-3. https://archive.org/details/resistancetotheo00dema/. 
  17. ↑ Moorhead, Joanna (8 July 2014). "The Little Red Schoolbook - honest about sex and the need to challenge authority". https://www.theguardian.com/education/2014/jul/08/the-little-red-schoolbook-republished-soren-hansen. 
  18. ↑ "The World; Osama bin Laden, In His Own Words". The New York Times. 1998-08-23. https://www.nytimes.com/1998/08/23/weekinreview/the-world-osama-bin-laden-in-his-own-words.html. 
  19. ↑ Peter Bergen (2021-08-19). "Five myths about Osama bin Laden". The Washington Post (Washington, D.C.). ISSN 0190-8286. OCLC 1330888409. https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/five-myths/osama-bin-laden-myths/2021/07/30/0d193194-eff0-11eb-bf80-e3877d9c5f06_story.html. [please check these dates]
  20. ↑ "The Taliban's Mao-inspired return to power in Afghanistan shows the US is failing to heed the lessons of history". ABC News. 18 August 2021. https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-08-19/taliban-return-power-afghanistan-mao-zedong-us-lessons-history/100386792. Retrieved 2022-08-24. 
  21. ↑ "How Chinese influence in Taliban-ruled Afghanistan poses fresh threat to India". Times of India. https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/videos/in-depth/how-chinese-influence-in-taliban-ruled-afghanistan-poses-fresh-threat-to-india/videoshow/86150491.cms. Retrieved 2022-08-24. 
  22. ↑ Han, Shepherd N. (10 June 2011). "By Understanding the Maoist Approach to Revolution and its Inherent Contradictions, Insights Will be Gained on Taliban Vulnerabilities". https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/citations/ADA547266. 
  23. ↑ "Campaign 2008: Joseph R. Biden, Jr.". http://www.cfr.org/bios/1451/joseph_r_biden_jr.html. 
  24. ↑ "Sen. Biden On N. Korea Test". CBS News. 5 July 2006. http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=1774577n?source=search_video. 
  25. ↑ Sarah Shamim (24 September 2025). "Russia a ‘paper tiger’: How Trump changed his position on Ukraine, NATO". Al Jazeera English. https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2025/9/24/russia-a-paper-tiger-how-trump-changed-his-position-on-ukraine-nato. 
  26. ↑ Ambrose, Tom; Lowe, Yohannes; Lamb, Kate; Jones, Callum; Lowe, Tom Ambrose (now); Yohannes; Jones (earlier), Callum (20 March 2026). "Trump calls Nato allies ‘cowards’ for not helping in strait of Hormuz; US officials say more troops heading to Middle East – live". https://www.theguardian.com/world/live/2026/mar/20/iran-war-live-updates-oil-prices-israel-netanyahu-ground-component-us-tensions-hormuz. 
  27. ↑ Beckley, Michael (2018). Unrivaled: Why America Will Remain the World's Sole Superpower. Ithaca. ISBN 978-1-5017-2480-0. OCLC 1048609456. 
  28. ↑ Frum, David (2021-05-03). "China Is a Paper Dragon" (in en). https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/05/china-paper-dragon/618778/. 



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