Paper tiger

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.

Robert Morrison, the British missionary and lexicographer, translated the phrase as "a paper tiger" in Vocabulary of the Canton Dialect in 1828.

[9] The term was frequently used in Chinese Internet discourse regarding the trade war begun by United States President Donald Trump.

[10]: 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.

[14][15][16] The phrase was used in a 2006 speech by then-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.

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.

Steve Day, a retired Canadian Armed Forces Joint Task Force 2 commander, described Russian command and control as a "bit more of a paper tiger" than previously thought as it was "utterly inept" and suggested that the Russian military "may not be as invincible as we've believed for a number of decades".