Research Background

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Warfares” toward Taiwan. For the first time it has been proposed that to achieve peaceful unification, “a plan of one country, two systems for Taiwan” will be explored. It signifies that Beijing has already studied and formulated steps towards reunification and will no longer postpone tackling the Taiwan issue. On the one hand, through the media, Internet and “specific person” (be known as CCP’s agent) more seriously diverging and infiltrating the trend of public opinion in Taiwan. On the other hand, by means of economic and trade, culture and academic exchanges to conceal CCP’s United Front tactic, simultaneously shape the image of Taiwan ruling party “refuse to negotiate”.

Different from the “soft power” practice recognized by the international community, the influence of “sharp power” is subversive and pervasive, which can weaken the sovereignty of other countries. It is an “asymmetric warfare” in which authoritarian state take the advantages of the democratic country’s open and freedom to projecting interference domestically. With the CCP’s increasingly high-profile publicity, the countries have begun to be vigilant and position the CCP as a threatening “foreign force”.

1.2 Research Background

China’s sharp Power has caused a heated discussion among the world recently.

December 5, 2017, National Endowment for Democracy published a report Sharp Power:

Rising Authoritarian Influence, which focuses on how China and Russia have furtively affected Latin America countries (Peru, Argentina) and Eastern European countries (Poland, Slovakia). According to the report, sharp power refers to the practice of authoritarian regime (China and Russia) to expand their influence to a targeted country through penetrating, subversion, stealth, and traversing its political and information environment. Sharp power does not publicly suppress others like military force, nor does

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it mean to attract the same value as cultural exchange, as if a Trojan horse, secretly undermining the domestic political economy environment.

As you may ask, what is wrong with the CCP’s huge investment in foreign propaganda work, Grand Overseas Propaganda Campaign (大外宣) since every country is engaging in the same business? Foreign propaganda work is also called soft power initially. All countries are striving to manage and of course they have invested great amount of capital.

For instance, the Korean film and television industry, which is marketed globally, it has also been regarded as a model for the country to invest in cultural innovation and advertisement. Yet, what is inappropriate with the CCP’s Grand Overseas Propaganda Campaign, such as the Confucius Institute’s promotion of language education and Chinese culture?

On August 19, 2013, Xi Jinping attended and made an important speech at the National Propaganda and Ideology Work Conference in Beijing. The Spirit of the Comrade of his speech indicated that it is important to compete for the right to speak internationally:

We must meticulously do foreign propaganda work well. Following our country’s economic and social development… there are still quite a few misunderstandings about us, the “China Threat Theory”, the “China Collapse Theory” and other such theories linger in one’s ears… But, the West still “slights” China. In the international public opinion structure, the West is strong and we are weak, Western major media control global public opinion, we often have rationales that we cannot speak out about, or once we’ve spoken about the, we can’t communicate them. This problem must be resolved with great efforts.

We must strive to move international communications capacity construction forward, innovate foreign propaganda methods, strengthen discourse system construction, strive to forge new concepts, new categories and new expressions that circulate between China and the outside world, tell China’s story well, disseminate China’s voice well, and strengthen our discourse power internationally (Rogier 2013).

According to Eric (2018), concerning soft power, China was the sole major country that considered succeed in the trend. “It integrated itself into the post-World War II

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international order by expanding deep and broad cultural and economic ties with virtually all countries in the world”. Now China is the largest trading nation in the world and history, and it refused to become a consumer of Western soft power. To quote from Eric (2018),

“It rejected Western definitions of democracy, freedom, and human rights, and it retained and strengthened its one-party political system. In soft power terms, China did not agree to want what the West wanted—culturally, ideologically, or institutionally”. Economically, China was an agriculture-based economy. However, it has turned from a poor backwater into the largest industrial economy in the world. According to Allison (2018), he calls this the “pyramid of poverty”. “Forty years ago, 9 out of 10 Chinese lived under the ‘extreme poverty line’ set by the World Bank. Today, the pyramid has been flipped, with only around 10 percent of Chinese living under that line”. Politically, it is obvious to see as a country implement socialism, the nation is relatively united as a whole and consistently support their country leader. As the West is struggling to cope with the shortcomings and the complex democratic process, China is taking the opportunity to promote its one-party political system. Compare with several predecessors, current country leader Xi Jinping believes that China’s ideological conviction competition with the West is much deeper.

Chinese propaganda experts are no longer satisfied with the idea of “dominant democracy”

outside the country, but consider that if the Communist Party expects to continue to take power, it will be necessary to focus on making China’s ideology attractive. China has significant performance with regards to its political perspective, economic perspective, also its power countermeasure tactics to deal with the West. On the report of China’s influence recently from National Endowment for Democracy, the attempts by Beijing to “wield influence in the spheres of media, culture, think tanks, and academia is neither a ‘charm

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offensive’, nor an effort to ‘win hearts and minds’.” The report argues that “It is better categorized as “sharp power” that pierces, penetrates, or perforates the political and information environment in the targeted countries (Walker & Ludwig, 2017, p.6)”.

To begin with, briefly distinguish the differences between sharp power and soft power.

The latter mainly enhances its own attractiveness or persuasion (image) through cultural communication; the former to use gain as a lure and threat to make the paradox that is beneficial to the narratives and become mainstream internationally. Avoiding and suppressing negative issues and accountabilities, thus reducing the resistance encountered by authoritarian powers in expanding economic projects and national image overseas.

In order to better understand the essence of sharp Power, it will be significant to understand its predecessors. International Relations theorists distinguish “Power” into a variety of forms, features and can be exercised with different degree of intensity, either good or bad, as force and violence, or with kindness and civility. Power in the field of international relations is basically “State Power”, signifying both economic and military power. With the aid of traditional understanding and interpretation of power, it connects the relationship between the “State Power” and “sharp power” that the latter needs the former as an upholder, which will support the aspects of the research. The concept of different power will be addressed in the Chapter 2.