China and soft power

Last semester, I did a group project on China and the media coverage of the Nobel Prize Winner, Liu Xiaobo. I started reading through all the Chinese English press and read about 20 articles that all mentioned soft power, Nye, and how to increase China’s soft power. I’m not really sure what this achieves because it doesn’t seem like the appropriate place to talk about soft power. It feels self-conscious and misplaced. Mingjiang Li’s article, “Soft Power in Chinese Discourse: Popularity and Prospect” gives a comprehensive overview of the number of articles and official documents that mention soft power, but points out that there is not one agreed upon definition or consensus about what it means or how to go about achieving it.

In reading Yiwei Wang’s 2008 article, “Public Diplomacy and the Rise of Chinese Soft Power”, there are several important points that highlight why maybe China is not achieving its PD goals. Wang looks at how some of the ways words and concepts are translated create misunderstanding. For example, he points out that in China, external and internal propaganda are not seen as separate. In addition, propaganda as a concept doesn’t have the same negative implications as it does for a US audience. However, I think that having any kind of targeting messaging, whether internal or external suffers credibility as most will be able discern unbalanced presentations of information.

Another important point in his article is that “traditional Chinese diplomacy emphasizes high politics and neglects grassroots politics.”(p. 260). With all the shifts in terms of governance structures, this weakens the ability of China to reach the publics it may need to communicate with in order to achieve its objectives.

In his discussion on the meaning of power in China, he distinguishes the Chinese meaning of power as related more to morality, in contrast to what he says power means in the west where the power subject controls the power subject. He articulates that in China, power come from morality, which stems from nature. However, in terms of PD, a lot of people in the West don’t see China’s power as based in morality. For example, many people in the US look at Chinese policy in Tibet as oppressive. Again, actions speak more than words.

So, while Li points out that China’s philosophy is about relativity and diversity, these philosophies don’t come through when Nobel Peace Prize winners are in jail and the internet is censored.