Wandering China

Global Asia journal: On how China wishes to be seen as a world power in the 21st-century, in its own terms.

Despite its long history of diplomacy, thinking about how it wanted to be perceived by foreign publics was never much of a concern in a past where it felt it had almost unipolar regional dominance. Today where the political landscape sees the re-rise of a multipolar world with significant power projection tucked in all corners, Zhou Qingnan makes clear the role of the ability of public diplomacy in keeping China’s transnational leveraging cards, good for use in the global marketplace of ideas and goods.

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How 21st-Century China Sees Public Diplomacy As a Path to Soft Power
By Zhou Qingan & Mo Jinwei
Source – Global Asia Journal, published September 2012

China’s stunning economic growth in the last 30 years has not resulted in positive public feelings abroad for the country as misunderstandings over many issues, including territorial disputes, have generated negative sentiment, write Qingan Zhou & Jinwei Mo. But the Chinese have in recent years experimented with discreet public diplomacy strategies to help point the way toward a more effective use of soft power as a way to build up the country’s image. The 2008 Summer Olympics hosted by Beijing were a showcase of these efforts.

Although China’s approach to soft power is still evolving, government officials and academics are using it as a way to integrate international communications, public diplomacy and cultural exchanges. China’s academic community realizes that with the country now the second largest economy in the world, it faces growing challenges in terms of its image and power despite rapid economic growth, rising per capita incomes and deepening involvement in public diplomacy over the past 30 years. It is particularly striking that from 2010 to 2012, uncertainty over China’s image and intentions emerged in the Asia-Pacific region and some African countries, due to disputes over adjacent seas and misunderstandings over foreign investment, respectively.

Chinese scholars have been studying Joseph Nye’s influential concept of soft power for some time as it touches on values, communication techniques and the confidence of one’s civilization. Therefore, China has gradually realized that public diplomacy acts as a way to achieve soft power. This has placed public diplomacy at the center of Chinese foreign relations by the end of the first decade of the 21st century.

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