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Chinese soft power: more Huntington than Nye? - Nicholas Dynon
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In a recent opinion piece for the Global Times, Professor Liu Aming of the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences’ Institute of International Relations writes that soft power “is a kind of power which can also make enemies.” At first glance, Liu’s comment is a curious one: how can a power that aims to attract rather than coerce also be a power that makes enemies?
Strip away the ostensibly benign surface of public diplomacy, cultural exchanges and language instruction and it becomes clear that the US and China are engaged in a soft power conflagration – a protracted cultural cold war. On one side bristles incumbent Western values hegemon, the US. On the other is China, one of those ‘non-Wests’ that Samuel Hunti[n]gton noted back in 1993 “increasingly have the desire, the will and the resources to shape the world in non-Western ways”.[1]
But to shape the world in non-Western ways means engaging in a soft power battlespace against an incumbent who already holds the high ground. Liu comments that in regions deeply influenced by Western cultures, political systems and values, “latecomer China is considered a “dissident force.” Under such circumstances, he writes, “it is rather difficult for China to attract Western countries with its own political and cultural charisma, let alone to replace their positions”.[2]
China’s soft power difficulties, so the argument goes, are in part the result of the US’ own soft power motivations. According to the former president of China’s Foreign Affairs University, Wu Jianmin, US soft power is driven by the imperative of “maintaining US hegemony in changing the world, of letting the world listen to the United States”.[3]
According to these viewpoints, the state of global post-colonial, post-communist ideational hegemony is such that large swathes of the earth’s population see the world through lenses supplied by the West. Through these lenses, perceptions of China are dominated by such concepts as the ‘China threat theory’, which brand China as a malevolent superpower upstart.
Official pronouncements from Chinese leaders have long reflected the idea that cultures clash and that Western culture is an aggressive threat to China’s own cultural sovereignty. It has thus taken myriad internal measures to ensure the country’s post-Mao reforms remain an exercise in modernization without ‘westernization’. Since the 1990s, for example, ideological doctrine has been increasingly infused with a new cultural nationalism, and the Party’s previously archaic propaganda system has been massively overhauled and working harder than ever.
[Propaganda poster at a Beijing subway station. Photograph taken January 2012]
It was under Jiang Zemin in the days after the June 4th 1989 amid fears over the contagion of eastern bloc collapse that renewed prominence was given to the cultural battlespace. Resolutions launched in 1996 called for the Party to “carry forward the cream of our traditional culture, prevent and eliminate the spread of cultural garbage, [and to] resist the conspiracy by hostile forces to ‘westernize’ and ‘split’ our country …”.[4] Hu Jintao rang the same tune, warning in early 2012 that “international hostile forces are intensifying the strategic plot of westernising and dividing China … Ideological and cultural fields are the focal areas of their long-term infiltration”.[5]
The rhetoric of culture war continues. In recent days, flagship CCP publication Seeking Truth has warned that “adopting Western ideas would push the nation into a dead end and dash hopes for realising the “Chinese dream”.[6] The country’s university lecturers have also been ordered to avoid discussing certain topics reflecting Western values, such as press freedom and civil rights. While such machinations may be viewed as post-leadership change posturing, they nevertheless reflect Beijing’s long-held sensitivity to the incursions of the ‘aggressive’ soft power of the West.
So, how can Chinese soft power combat the US soft power high-ground advantage? Classical military strategist Sun Tzu famously likened an effective army to water. Just as flowing water avoids the heights and hastens to the lowlands, so an army avoids strength and strikes weakness. So while winning over the hearts and minds of Main Street USA may not be in Beijing’s sights, there are perhaps more achievable targets, from its cultivation of the developing world to enhancing its domestic soft power among its own populace.
On the latter front – and rather ironically – recent reportage indicates that Beijing is already getting a helping hand from US soft power central – Hollywood. According to reports, US film producers now modify blockbuster movies in order to placate Chinese authorities and audiences and so reap the massive earnings to be made by a mainland Chinese release.[7] With an increasing incidence of such ‘kowtowing to China’ within artistic, commercial and political spheres in the West, it may well be Beijing’s economic hard power that ultimately delivers a culture war victory for China.
Indeed, this would provide for Chinese soft power what Sun Tzu would regard as the smartest kind of victory: winning without having to fight.
Nicholas Dynon
[1] Samuel P Huntington, “The Clash of Civilizations?”, Foreign Affairs, Vol 72, No 3, Summer 1993.
[2] Liu Aming, “Growing soft power more than just appeal to Western interest”, Global Times, 13 May 2013, www.globaltimes.cn/content/781257.shtml#.Ua0xoY6Chve accessed 06 June 2013.
[3] Wu Jianming, “Yao zugou guji zhonghua wenhua dui shijiede gongxian” (Need to sufficiently estimate Chinese cultures’ contribution to the world), Beijing ribao (Beijing Daily) 29 March 2010, http://theory.people.com.cn/GB/11242039.html, accessed 06 June 2013.
[4] Guanyu jiaqiang shehuizhuyi jingshen wenming jianshe ruogan zhongyao wenti de jueyi (Resolutions Concerning a Certain Number of Important Questions Regarding the Strengthening of the Building of Socialist Spiritual Civilization), October 1996. Note: at the Talks at the Yan’an forum on literature and Art, May 2, 1942 – seven years prior to the founding of the People’s Republic, Mao Zedong lectured to his followers in the desert stronghold Yan’an on the need to ensure that literature and art “operate as powerful weapons for uniting and educating the people and for attacking and destroying the enemy, and that they help the people fight the enemy with one heart and mind”.
[5] Antoaneta Becker, “China’s cultural front against the West”, Aljazeera, 17 January 2012, www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/2012/01/2012116141726105759.html, accessed 06 June 2013.
[6] Terry Ng, “Attack on Western values sparks fears over prospects for political reform”, South China Morning Post, 04 June 2013, www.scmp.com/news/china/article/1252829/attack-western-values-sparks-fears-over-prospects-political-reform, accessed 06 June 2013.
[7] Rory Carroll, “Be nice to China: Hollywood risks ‘artistic surrender’ in effort to please”, The Guardian, 30 May 2013, www.guardian.co.uk/film/2013/may/30/hollywood-china-film-industry?CMP=twt_gu, accessed 06 June 2013.
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