Doesn't look like soft power to us
China's venture at using soft power to expand its influence is running into some resistance from those who don't see the efforts as "soft power."
TDSB votes to delay partnership with Beijing-backed Confucius Institute
Trustees of the Toronto District School Board [TDSB] have passed a motion to delay the rollout of Mandarin courses [offered by the Confucius Institute] to elementary students in September.
Trustees overwhelmingly voted for the delay on Wednesday evening, with three opposed. The vote followed heated debate among trustees of Canada’s largest school board…
Former TDSB chair Chris Bolton was the driving force behind the Confucius Institute…
Mr. Bolton resigned last Friday as chair and a trustee, citing personal reasons. Trustees elected his successor on Wednesday – vice-chair Mari Rutka…
Ms. Rutka told reporters the TDSB’s secretive agreement with the Chinese government is typical of the lack of openness. Many trustees had little idea what they were getting into when they approved the Confucius Institute, she said.
It was Ms. Rutka who tabled the motion to suspend the Confucius Institute to give trustees an opportunity to investigate concerns about censorship by the Chinese government…
More than 400 Confucius institutes operate worldwide, most in universities and colleges. The TDSB was the third school board in Canada to open an institute…
The institutes are seen as a global “soft-power” outreach effort by the Chinese government, funding foreign language and culture centres to foster good will.
Critics of the Confucius Institutes suggest there is another agenda. The American Association of University Professors is the latest group of educators to raise alarms about an organization whose instructors are trained to self-censor topics that are politically taboo in China…
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Labels: China, SoftPower
Defending soft power
Soft power is a concept that easily gets lost in the study of comparative politics. When the Chinese government first established Confucius Institutes, observers appropriately pointed to them as the use of soft power to extend the influence of the nation state. When critics appeared recently, the government-run media defended the institutes.
Fear or Ignorance Drives Confucius Institutes’ Critics, Xinhua Says
Chinese state media on Tuesday defended the spread of Confucius Institutes worldwide, lashing back at a recent call for North American universities to rethink their links with the cultural and language programs, which are backed by the Chinese government.
The American Association of University Professors recently argued that universities that form partnerships with Confucius Institutes sacrifice their integrity and that of their academic staff. The criticism of one of China’s most visible soft-power initiatives struck a sour note with Xinhua, the state news agency, which dismissed the group’s concerns as stemming from “either fear of other cultures or ignorance — or both.”…
The professors’ association, whose focus is promoting academic freedom, had warned that the institutes “function as an arm of the Chinese state and are allowed to ignore academic freedom.” The organization called for universities to end their partnerships with Confucius Institutes or renegotiate their contracts…
The discussion has heated up as the number of institutes has grown rapidly in recent years. Just 10 years after the first Confucius Institute was opened in South Korea, there are now 440 of them, around a quarter of which are based in North America…
Confucius, once the target of attacks in the Cultural Revolution along with other remnants of “old China,” has since been rehabilitated in the eyes of official China. (Xinhua’s editorial refers to him as the “great Chinese sage.”)
Last November, President Xi Jinping visited the sage’s hometown and noted the success of Confucius Institutes abroad, even among “some countries that have ideological prejudices against” China…
See also:
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Labels: China, concepts, SoftPower
Promoting your brand
The story from the
New York Times is about Chinese efforts in Kenya, but it's likely a model to be followed in places like Nigeria, Iran, Mexico, and Europe. A good reputation makes it easier to buy African farmland and oil fields. All of which can promote greater economic growth.
Pursuing Soft Power, China Puts Stamp on Africa’s News
Beijing’s efforts to win Kenyan affections involve much more than bricks and concrete. The country’s most popular English-language newspapers are flecked with articles by the Chinese state news agency, Xinhua. Television viewers can get their international news from either CCTV, the Chinese broadcasting behemoth, or CNC World, Xinhua’s English-language start-up. On the radio, just a few notches over from Voice of America and the BBC, China Radio International offers Mandarin instruction along with upbeat accounts of Chinese-African cooperation and the global perambulations of Chinese leaders.
 |
| CCTV headquarters in Nairobi |
“You would have to be blind not to notice the Chinese media’s arrival in Kenya,” said Eric Shimoli, a top editor at Kenya’s most widely read newspaper, The Daily Nation, which entered into a partnership with Xinhua last year. “It’s a full-on charm offensive.”
At a time when most Western broadcasting and newspaper companies are retrenching, China’s state-run news media giants are rapidly expanding in Africa and across the developing world. They are hoping to bolster China’s image and influence around the globe, particularly in regions rich in the natural resources needed to fuel China’s powerhouse industries and help feed its immense population.
The $7 billion campaign, part of a Chinese Communist Party bid to expand the country’s soft power, is based in part on the notion that biased Western news media have painted a distorted portrait of China...
“The fundamental difference is that Western-style media views itself as a watchdog and a protector of public interests, while the Chinese model seeks to defend the state from jeopardy or questions about its authority,” said Douglas Farah, a senior fellow at the International Assessment and Strategy Center in Washington.
At home, Chinese officials make little effort to conceal their view of journalism as a servant of the Communist Party. “The first social responsibility and professional ethic of media staff should be understanding their role clearly and being a good mouthpiece,” Hu Zhanfan, the president of CCTV, said in a speech. “Journalists who think of themselves as professionals, instead of as propaganda workers, are making a fundamental mistake about identity.” …
See also
this article from January 2012 about the opening of CCTV news operations in Kenya.
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High tech soft power
China sent three astronauts to its space lab. What more of a demonstration is needed to show that China is catching up with the USA and Russia?
China launches spaceship with first female astronaut
China launched Saturday Shenzhou-9 spacecraft with the country's first female astronaut aboard…
Main tasks of the Shenzhou-9 mission include the manual docking procedure conducted between the Shenzhou-9 and the orbiting space lab module Tiangong-1…
A successful manual docking will demonstrate a grasp of essential space rendezvous and docking know-how, a big step in the country's manned space program to build a space station around 2020...
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Another route to global influence
As China seeks to make itself more of a world leader, it looks for ways to counterbalance Western dominated institutions. The Shanghai Cooperation Organization is one way. BRICS is another.
For Group of 5 Nations, Acronym Is Easy, but Common Ground Is HardAs the shock waves of the global recession convulsed Europe and the United States three years ago, the leaders of Brazil, Russia, India and China gathered for a meeting that seemed to signal a new era. They had global buzz as rising economic powers, a catchy acronym, BRIC, and an ambitious agenda to remake an international monetary system long dominated by the West…
When the group’s leaders meet in New Delhi… their biggest achievement will have been adding an S: they took on South Africa last year. The five BRICS nations still rank among the fastest-growing economies in the world, and, even if growth has slowed, individually, their global influence continues to rise. But they have struggled to find the common ground necessary to act as a unified geopolitical alliance…
The BRICS are still a new group, and some analysts argue that with time they could become a more cohesive alliance. But for now, they are troubled by internal rivalries and contradictions that have stymied the group’s ability to take any significant action toward a primary goal: reforming Western-dominated international financial institutions.
Since its inception, the group has discussed creating a development bank to rival the World Bank, and on Wednesday a Chinese official expressed hope that a breakthrough might come this week. Yet to date the proposal has been stalled, partly over worries that China would dominate the new institution…
Deep internal political and economic differences complicate the prospects for unity. India, Brazil and South Africa are democracies and have already used their own separate trilateral group, IBSA, as a primary platform for coordinating positions on several major diplomatic issues.
Russia, however, has drifted away from democracy toward strongman rule under Vladimir V. Putin. China is the world’s largest authoritarian state and has by far the largest and most powerful economy in BRICS, which creates a complicated dynamic. China is the heavyweight, and thus the natural leader of the group, except that it is the political outlier…
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Iran Barbie ban
Ah, the dangers of soft (or plastic) power.
Iran’s morality police crack down on sale of Barbie and KenIran’s morality police are cracking down on the sale of Barbie dolls to protect the public from what they see as pernicious western culture eroding Islamic values, shopkeepers said on Monday…
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Quality products as soft power
As China seeks to improve its trading relationships with Brazil, it's using new cars to send a message to Brazilians.
China tries to win over Brazilian consumersHere in Latin America’s economic giant, the prevailing image of China has been that of an unquenchable consumer and the manufacturer of all things cheap.
But the opening of 55 glitzy JAC Motors dealerships in Brazil, all selling sleekly designed cars built in China, has helped Chinese officials and businessmen present a different image of their country, as modern and dynamic…
“The Brazilian image of Chinese products – it’s changing very fast,” said Sergio Habib, 52, a Brazilian businessman who has imported Jaguars and Aston Martins and now runs the JAC dealerships. “We are helping that with JAC cars.”
All over the world, China is using its powers of persuasion — through its products, its potent economy, an increasingly sophisticated diplomatic service and the appeal of its culture — to win over consumers and make it easier for Chinese companies to enter vital markets and secure raw materials.
Analysts call it soft power, and it is wielded differently in Asia, where China is trying to placate neighbors jittery about its military, than in the United States, where concerns often center on Chinese authoritarianism and unfair trade practices…
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Certainly not soft power
The idea of soft power is to exercise influence by being attractive or offering benefits. ("sugar catches more flies than vinegar…") If this report is accurate, Iran's Revolutionary Guard is not content to appear attractive.
Europe Accuses Iranian Force of Aiding Syrian CrackdownThe European Union announced on Wednesday that it was leveling sanctions against Iran’s Al Quds military force, saying it had given technical and material support to President Bashar al-Assad of Syria in his efforts to crush the five-month-old uprising against his rule…
The European Union said in a statement published in its official journal that Al Quds, an elite unit of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, “provided technical assistance, equipment and support to the Syrian security services to repress civilian protest movements.”
The United States and other countries have also accused Tehran of aiding Mr. Assad’s crackdown. British newspapers have quoted unnamed Western diplomats in recent weeks as saying that Iran was providing riot-control gear and surveillance equipment to the Assad government.
The secretive Al Quds force is an elite and ideologically grounded unit that was created to protect and promote the Iranian revolution. It carries out operations beyond Iran’s borders and was responsible for initially training and arming the Hezbollah militia in Lebanon…
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Labels: concepts, Iran, SoftPower
Time for soft power?
Did the Chinese bring out the big guns in a soft power battle? Or did they neglect to do so?
China brands Google 'snotty-nosed' as cyber feud intensifiesChina must bolster its online defences in the battle for public opinion, two military officers said on Friday as Beijing sought to portray itself as a victim rather than a perpetrator of cyberwarfare.
Two days after the US-based search engine Google revealed China was the origin of a high-profile hacking attack, senior colonel Ye Zheng and his colleague Zhao Baoxian of the People's Liberation Army emphasised the need for a robust internet strategy…
An editorial in the nationalist Global Times newspaper [described] Google as "snotty-nosed" and resentful about its failure to secure a larger share of the market in China…
[T]he search engine traced the attacks to Jinan, the provincial capital of Shandong and home to a school that has previously been suspected of hosting hackers. US secretary of state Hillary Clinton described the allegations as "very serious".
Chinese officials acknowledged last week that their army – like that of several other nations – had established a cyberwarfare unit…
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Undermining yourself
Joseph S. Nye Jr., a professor at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government, offered some thoughts about soft power and about the Chinese attempts to use it.
China’s repression undoes its charm offensiveI was asked to lecture at Beijing University on soft power, the ability to use attraction and persuasion to get what you want without force or payment… The auditorium that day was packed, and I had been told that more than a thousand articles have been published in China on this topic. That may have something to do with the fact that in 2007, President Hu Jintao told the 17th Congress of the Communist Party that China needed to increase its soft power.
Over the past decade, China’s economic and military might have grown impressively. But that has frightened its neighbors into looking for allies to balance rising Chinese hard power…
The result of this regional wariness is that China is spending billions on a charm offensive to increase its soft power. Chinese aid programs to Africa and Latin America are not limited by the institutional or human rights concerns that constrain Western aid…
For all these efforts, however, China has had a limited return on its investment. A recent BBC poll found that opinions of China’s influence are positive in much of Africa and Latin America but predominantly negative in the United States, Europe, India, Japan and South Korea…
Great powers often try to use culture and narrative to create soft power that promotes their advantage, but it is not an easy sell when it is inconsistent with their domestic realities.
Shortly after the 2008 Olympics, China’s domestic crackdown in Tibet and Xianjiang and its resumed pressure on human rights activists undercut the very gains in soft power it had built up. The Shanghai Expo was a great success but was followed by the jailing of Nobel Peace laureate Liu Xiaobo. And for all the efforts to turn Xinhua and China Central Television into competitors of CNN and the BBC, there is little international audience for brittle propaganda. In the wake of the Middle East revolutions, China is tightening its controls on the Internet and arresting activists for fear that the Egyptian example might inspire similar protests…
After my lecture at Beijing University, a student asked how China could increase its soft power… I told the student that much of a country’s soft power is generated by its civil society and that China had to lighten up on its censorship and controls if it wished to succeed. But I also admitted that he would probably not find my answer very helpful.
See also: Stadium monument of China-Costa Rica friendship: president
Costa Rican President Laura Chinchilla on Friday said the newly built National Stadium donated by China will be a "permanent monument of friendship" between the two nations…
Chinese community pledges 120 houses for needy in Botswana
The Chinese community in Botswana promised on Friday to build 120 houses for the local needy, showing their support to Botswanan President Ian Khama's Housing Appeal for the Needy launched in 2009...
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Planning for soft power
Some Chinese are openly discussing why to increase the country's soft power. Too bad they don't say more (publicly) about how they're going to do that.
Report: China should stress modern cultureChina should strive to gain more cultural soft power by discussing its current culture rather than lingering over its traditional culture, said one of the country's top think tanks…
"We have emphasized our traditional culture to an extreme extent in the past decade, but we don't have a strong voice in international dialogues," Yi Junqing, director of the Central Compilation and Translation Bureau, said during a press conference for the release of the Annual Report on China's Cultural Soft Power Research (2010).
In general, a country's soft power refers to its ability to get other countries to share its goals and values through the use of attraction, rather than of coercion or payments. Yi said he thinks China can reap great benefits from wielding soft power, but so far has failed to do so…
Experts conceded it will be a long time before China can become a "strong country" by promoting its cultural soft power. But steps are already being taken along that path…
See also
previous blog entries about China's use of soft power.
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A sage's soft power
The promotion of Chinese studies is a classic example of the concept of soft power. However, it might cause confusion in China.
Rectification of statuesA WEEK before President Hu Jintao’s visit to America... the appearance of a giant bronze statue of Confucius on the east side of Tiananmen Square caused a stir in the Chinese capital. He is the first non-revolutionary to be commemorated on the hallowed ground of Chinese communism. The party, having once vilified the ancient sage, now depends on him in its attempts at global rebranding…
In 2004 China began setting up language schools abroad to extend its cultural reach. They were called Confucius Institutes, apparently to boost their appeal by disguising any links with communism…
During his trip to America, Mr Hu… [visited] a high school in Chicago that is home to a Confucius Institute. Of about 320 such institutes worldwide, over one-fifth are in America. The United States is also home to more than 200 offshoot “Confucius Classrooms”…
China has been careful not to encourage these language centres to act as overt purveyors of the party’s political viewpoints, and little suggests they are doing so. But officials do say that an important goal is to give the world a “correct” understanding of China…
Promoting Confucianism is not part of their remit. Party officials use Confucius as a Father-Christmas-like symbol of avuncular Chineseness rather than as the proponent of a philosophical outlook…
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Anodyne?
Soft power has been discussed here before, but it's been awhile since it has not been overwhelmed by war and conflict. China has brought the subject to the surface again. China's new English language news service is part of the projection of soft power.
China funds English TV news channel CNC World in push for soft power China's state news agency launched an international English language news channel yesterday – the latest step in the government's multibillion-pound soft power push.
The authorities hope expanding foreign language media will help promote the country's image and viewpoint, and ultimately challenge the BBC or CNN. But the low-key launch of Xinhua's new CNC World channel suggests that day is some way off…
Stations such as al-Jazeera English have been welcomed as a counterbalance to Western media parochialism. But CNC World's launch is inevitably shadowed by China's extensive censorship…
Xinhua has bureaux in 130 countries and there is a growing number of experienced and professional Chinese journalists. But even allowing for teething problems, CNC World looked dreary beside its domestic rival CCTV, let alone CNN or al-Jazeera…
For the most part, items were brief and anodyne. But there were glimpses of the alternative news agenda that officials want to spread…
The government has been particularly keen to redress what it sees as biased and negative reporting by overseas media since the Tibetan riots and unrest in March 2008…
*
an·o·dyne, adj., Capable of soothing or eliminating pain.
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Politics and projection of power
It's a bit more than soft power, but a bit less than force. And a good question is, "What motivates the actions that look like interference?"
China looks to export censorshipA few days before the start of this year's Melbourne International Film Festival its executive director received an "audacious" telephone call.
An official from China's consulate in the city called him to "urge" the festival to withdraw a film about the Chinese activist Rebiya Kadeer.
Beijing then tried to persuade the organisers of the Frankfurt Book Fair not to allow two Chinese writers to attend an event.
China says it does not interfere in the internal affairs of other countries.
But some see these acts as an attempt by China to use abroad the tough censorship measures it constantly employs at home...
The festival decided to ignore the advice and go ahead with the film...
The festival organisation was subjected to an intense campaign of threats, intimidation and disruption, although it is not clear who - if anyone - orchestrated the campaign...
[At] the Frankfurt Book Fair... Chinese officials were angry when they found out writers Dai Qing [right] and Bei Ling had been invited to a symposium connected to the fair...
China often asks foreign governments and organisations not to do something that it perceives to be against its interests. It recently complained to Japan when Tokyo allowed Ms Kadeer to enter the country.
But it says this does not contravene its policy of non-interference...
David Zweig, of the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, is not so sure the Chinese are doing it from a position of strength.
"Sometimes we cannot tell whether it's confidence or concern," said Mr Zweig, the director of the Centre on China's Transnational Relations, based at his university...
Mr Zweig added that there could also be another reason behind the pressure - the Chinese government and its people are often quick to take offence at opinions they do not like to hear.
And he said ordinary people were sometimes more sensitive than officials - forcing the government to take a tougher stance internationally...
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Labels: capacity, China, dissent, globalization, SoftPower
Soft Power
Blog entries about soft powerTwo years ago in September, I posted a series of entries about soft power, an idea that was much in the news. I thought it would be a good conceptual way to begin the school year.
I just reviewed those entries and I still think it was a good conceptual way to begin a school year. I've added a couple entries to the topic since then.
Recently, the Iranian hardliners have warned of how the "reformists" are trying to use soft power to overthrow the righteous regime established by the Ayatollah Khomeini.
Check these entries out.
And remember, if there is another topic you want to investigate, blog entries since the spring of 2006 are indexed using over 70 topics at the Delicious site.
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Labels: pedagogy, SoftPower
Internal struggle continues
Ex-President Denounces Iran’s GovernmentMohammad Khatami, Iran’s former president, made a fiery speech Sunday against the government, accusing its leaders of trying to smear their enemies and purge them from public life with “fascist and totalitarian methods.”
The speech by Mr. Khatami, a leading reformist, came a day after his ally, the losing presidential candidate Mir Hussein Moussavi, called on supporters to deepen their protest movement, in his first major statement in weeks.
Together, the two statements, posted on the Internet by opposition Web sites, made clear that opposition leaders — much like their hard-line foes — are girding supporters for a long-term battle to be waged as much through ideas and quiet social organizing as through the public protests...
The conservatives appear to be planning a broader campaign... On Saturday night, Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, told a group of artists and cultural professionals that Iran was embroiled in a “soft war” against internal enemies. Anyone in the field of culture must now recognize important distinctions between “friends and enemies,” “attack and defense” and “explanation and propaganda,” the ayatollah said.
His speech echoed another one Friday night by the deputy chief of staff of Iran’s armed forces, Muhammad Bagher-Zolghadr, who outlined the distinction between “hard war” and “soft war,” in which “the enemy is everywhere.”...
Iran’s Universities Punish Students Who Disputed VoteIranian universities have begun disciplining and suspending students who took part in street protests after the disputed presidential election in June, reformist Web sites reported Friday and Saturday.
The new disciplinary actions came as officials reported that a presidential panel has begun an investigation of the humanities curriculums at universities, the semiofficial Mehr news agency reported. Although the panel was formed a year ago, it did not start work until after recent calls to purge universities of professors and curriculums deemed “un-Islamic,” based on the fear that the teaching of secular concepts helped fuel the political unrest following the June 12 election...
Significantly, several clerics and high-ranking officials have taken aim at Islamic Azad University, which is based in Tehran and has branches around the country. The university is largely run by the family of former President Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, a powerful moderate and leading opponent of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad...
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Labels: Iran, politics, SoftPower
Re-branding Nigeria
I would have missed this new public relations campaign if not for the discussions on a couple blogs written by Nigerians.
Treating a country like a product is an interesting idea. The skeptical bloggers are asking whose relatives are being hired by the government to run the campaign. Others are asking how the Nigerian populace will respond in the face of poverty, hunger, and corruption.
It turns out that this is the second rebranding campaign. The previous administration had its own campaign which is now being replaced.
This is a version of exercising soft power. How does it compare to the soft power campaigns of the other countries your students are studying?
Yar’Adua unveils re-branding Nigeria logo, slogan tomorrow "President Umaru Yar’Adua, will, [March 17] in Abuja, unveil the re-branding Nigeria logo and slogan, as his administration pushes to give the nation a more positive image.
"Former Nigerian Head of State, General Yakubu Gowon would be chairman of the occasion which is expected to attract a cream of top government functionaries, business moguls, the diplomatic corps and media executives.
"According to the Minister of Information and Communications, Prof. Dora Akunyili, the launch would be a major step towards changing the negative perception of Nigeria and her people both locally and internationally.
"The Minister said the campaign would also target 're-orienting Nigerians, changing the negative attitudes of Nigerians, making Nigerians to believe in themselves, inculcating optimal spirit of patriotism in Nigerians and at the same time, celebrating our very best before the international community'.
"The minister said the core of this campaign would be a return to the cultural values of Nigerians as a people, as well as, how Nigerians see the nation...
"She noted that the mass media had a key role to play by emphasising positive story about Nigeria and responsible report of what could be considered as the negative, for the campaign to succeed.."
Leave it to the foreign press to point out a negative amid the positive roll out of Nigerian's new image.Theft mars Nigerian 're-branding'"Thieves stole a mobile phone belonging to a member of a new team campaigning to improve Nigeria's image as a country riddled by crime and chaos.
"Isawa Elaigwu told the launch of the 'rebrand Nigeria' campaign he noticed the phone was gone minutes before he was due to address the event...
"'This is just the sort of thing we need to fight against'.
"Nigeria is often seen abroad as a violent and chaotic place, full of people who use e-mail scams to cheat money out of unwitting victims...
"On Tuesday the ministry unveiled a new slogan "Nigeria: Good people, great country", and a logo..."
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Labels: Nigeria, SoftPower
Soft power: domestic and global policies
Yulin Zhuang, an American living in Beijing, wrote the
the Hypermondern (a Beijing-based blog) about Chinese soft power. (Thanks to Dan Harris at
China Law Blog for the reference.)
How would your students describe the intersection of domestic and foreign policy and the global political environment that creates the opportunity for China to exercise its soft power? How would they describe changes that could threaten China's soft power? Would such changes affect policies, the government, or the regime?
The Loss of Soft Power"'My family, at the dinner table [in Beijing], will talk about how terrible it is. The conversation goes something like this: 'See? This is what happens when you interfere with other countries’ internal affairs.'... And finally the smug suggestion: 'America should learn from China. China makes friends wherever it goes, not enemies. That’s because we don’t try to tell them what to do.'
"The United States... has made many enemies throughout the world, and alienated many of its friends. What sets my nerves on edge, however, is the sense that the People’s Republic will never face the same problems...
"Before... 1972... China had no interests overseas. It maintained diplomatic relations with only a few countries and was focused entirely on itself. China was self-sufficient but hopelessly backwards. With Deng’s reforms and the opening of the market came an increase in the amount of international trade and the rise of consumerism... China’s entry into the WTO in 2001 integrated it into the world economy, making it vulnerable to many of the problems of globalization...
"As China grows increasingly dependent on foreign sources for critical resources, it will increasingly invest in the global market. Already Chinese companies have made many moves to achieve better supply security, especially in oil... Chinese investment means Chinese nationals abroad. China is investing heavily in third world countries, competing with Western nations in order to be the first to exploit those resources. China’s lack of an imperialist history and its status as the world’s largest developing nation gives it a lot of influence with these countries. One of the cornerstones of Chinese foreign policy is the idea of noninterference, and Chinese aid comes with none of the demands for transparency, accountability, and political reform that Western aid comes with. For the moment, China truly is making a great number of friends in the third world.
"This trend, however, cannot last forever... As China develops, it falls into the classic pattern of developed nations -- importing raw materials from underdeveloped nations, exporting the finished products back to them, and pocketing the difference... China comes first...
"The developing world is an unsafe place. The Chinese promise noninterference, but as its assets in the developing world increase, so does the risk of losing them. China has shown itself to be committed to regional stability, preferring multilateral talks to action. However, if war breaks out, it will have to choose between protecting its citizens and investments or losing both...
"[T]he case of Darfur. Ethnic violence on the scale of genocide has been occurring for several years, and the UN has done nothing even to censure the Sudanese government for its actions because China has made it clear that it will use its veto to shoot down any 'interference' with Sudanese domestic policies. The reason for this is the heavy Chinese reliance on Sudanese oil fields... While this kind of covert support wins them friends now, in the future, it will perhaps make them just as many enemies...
"It would be naive of China to feel that its place as the champion of the developing world is secure... It would be a good idea for Chinese citizens to not be complacent in the knowledge that a Chinese passport makes one a low-profile target in most countries, but to realize that it will take careful maneuvering by the government and China’s companies in order to maintain the current status quo."
See also
teaching comparative's previous entries about soft power.
Labels: China, SoftPower
The use of soft power
Soft power is one of those concepts that is on the interface between comparative politics and international relations (two of the sub-fields of political science). For comparative purposes I think we need to emphasize policy decisions that are made to use
soft power and policy decisions about how to react to the use of
soft power by others.
The USA is not the only country to use
soft power.
China is also seen as using
soft power, especially in its dealings with its Asian neighbors and with energy rich countries.
The
International Herald Tribune describes it this way,
China's 'soft power' winning allies in Asia"It looks like a pleasant place to conduct affairs of state, a broad, palm-fringed compound by the side of the sea with reflecting pools, a rock garden and fluttering flags.
"It is the future Foreign Ministry of East Timor, as depicted on a large billboard at the gate of a construction site - and it is a gift from the Chinese government.
"Together with a new presidential palace that is also being built by the Chinese, it will be one of the most impressive buildings in this low-rise capital...
"China's friendly stance is part of a broad diplomatic and economic policy throughout the region that has acquired the epithets 'soft power' and 'charm offensive.' Most analysts say East Timor seems to be of interest less as a prize in its own right than as a natural extension of China's energetic courtship of its neighbors in Southeast Asia...
"Reversing a more confrontational policy after the Asian economic crisis of 1997, China plays down any self-interest as it increases trade and aid throughout Southeast Asia...
"In the longer term, some analysts say, China may want to create its own sphere of influence, elbowing aside the United States in the region. Washington's preoccupation today with wars and terrorist threats has left inviting openings for China's advances in Southeast Asia..."
A
Xinhua article about the March 2007 meeting of the National People's Congress, adds this about Chinese "soft power" and extends the domestic theme of building a harmonious society to a foreign policy goal of "building a harmonious world."
Soft Power, a New Focus at 'Two Sessions'"To develop China's 'soft power', a term first invented by Harvard professor Joseph Nye... emerged as a hot topic at this year's annual sessions of China's parliament and top political advisory body.
"Mr. Nye defined 'soft power' as the ability to get what a nation wants through attractions -- rather than coercion -- such as culture, political values, and foreign policies. He regarded these attractions as the true means to success in world politics...
"Such an expression of soft power can be found in government agendas and suggestions offered by legislators and political advisors...
"'We should never underestimate the importance of building soft power as economic miracle is only one side of China's rising in the world arena,' said NPC deputy Peng Fuchun, a philosophy professor at Wuhan University in central Hubei Province.
"In light of this, China is striving to achieve the other side, namely exerting more international influence through diplomacy and national image lifting...
"China was widely believed to have used the three major events to foster its soft power by strengthening cooperation, publicizing the concept of 'building a harmonious world' and allaying fears over its rising from other countries..."
Labels: China, concepts, globalization, pedagogy, SoftPower, theory
