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16 April 2015

China's Soft Power Obsession

By Xie Tao
April 14, 2015

China needs to rethink its quest for soft power. 

“Power, like love, is easier to experience than to define or measure,” Joseph Nye once wrote. That’s even more true when it comes to soft power, defined by Nye as “the ability to get what you want through attraction rather than coercion or payments.”

Such attraction, according to Nye, derives from a country’s cultural heritage, political values, economic prosperity, technological innovation, smart diplomacy, etc. Attraction could be temporary, but it also could be internalized and become one’s sincere preference. In the real world, this could mean that if a foreigner has internalized democracy and freedom as championed by the United States, he/she will probably support U.S. policies to spread — or even impose — these values in other countries, even if such policies may be detrimental to this person’s interests (e.g., bringing domestic instability in his or her own country).

If that’s the case, who wouldn’t want soft power? Instead of military coercion or economic payments, a country can achieve its foreign policy goals through willing support and cooperation from others. Such a soft approach to foreign policy not only adds to one’s legitimacy, but also avoids conflicts. To be able to achieve foreign policy goals in such a fashion is to be softly powerful. Or to borrow from the famous ancient Chinese strategist Sun Tzu, “The supreme art of war is to subdue the enemy without a war.”

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