Chapter 2 What’s the Difference between “Sharp Power” and Other Powers?
2.7 Conclusion
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is a type of hard power”. Given that, can the measurement and determination of sharp power be analyzed from the perspective of power of resource elements? For instance, the strength of sharp power is determined by the country’s completeness of national power elements, the degree of military and economic development, even if the current definition of sharp power is primarily about the manipulation or penetration of political and information environments. In other words, in terms of the information manipulated by the authoritarian states against democratic countries, whether the big country has more “hard power” than the small country, will it have more sharp power than the small country? Or, even if the small country does not have “hard power” assets, can it still develop or have advantages in sharp power? Or, some small countries may not be able to exercise sharp power due to the lack of hard power?
Therefore, whether the capability of sharp power is actually determined by the size of the country’s hard power, it needs further discussion and comparison, not to mention any unanimous opinion on it. These theoretical deficiencies can be explored by here after researchers to avoid the abuse of the concept of sharp power.
2.7 Conclusion
The purpose of this chapter is to answer the differences between sharp power and other powers. From the above discussion, I find that: Hard power is the means of using military and economic power to influence the behavior or interests of other political bodies. It involves the behaviors of threats, military intervention, economic sanctions, or coercive diplomacy. Hard power can be generalized as linked with the possession of certain tangible resources, such as population, territory, natural resources, economic and military strength (Campbell & O’Hanlon, 2006; Ernest, 2008; Nye, 2003); Soft power is a concept
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describing the ability to attract and co-opt rather than coerce or using force as a means of persuasion. The composition of soft power is primarily including a country’s culture, political values, democratic values, free economics, human rights, and its foreign policy.
A country may attain the outcome it wants in world politics because other countries–
admiring values, emulating its examples, aspiring to its level of prosperity and openness–
want to follow it (Nye, 2004); Smart power is a term suggests that hard power and soft power should be integrated and properly combined in terms of strategies and resources to achieve the best outcome. Smart power involves the strategic use of diplomacy, persuasion, capacity building, and the projection of power and influence in ways that are cost effective and have political and social legitimacy (Nossel, 2004; Crocker, 2007; Nye, 2009); Sharp power is a political operation from an authoritarian regime to a targeted country through penetrating, subversion, stealth, and traverse its political and information environment. It is a more straightforward, perforates, and robust assailing manipulation. The authoritarian regime in nature, which adopting high pressured top-down governance internally as they fight against dissidents, control Freedom of the Press, monopolize information flow;
externally, they actively control through media, culture, think tanks, academic channels, incorporating with economic or diplomatic incentives and intimidation to export its ideology so to achieve a specific political economy goal. These regimes are not necessarily seeking to “win hearts and minds,” the common frame of reference for “soft power” efforts, but they are surely seeking to manage their target audiences by manipulating or poisoning the information that reaches them (Walker & Ludwig, 2017; the Economist, 2017a; 2018b).
After a more in-depth discussion on the three powers, I summarized the factors that can distinguish soft power, hard power, and sharp power:
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(1) Whether the country is a totalitarian regime. Due to the fact that totalitarian states are hardly open up to civil society, they stifle the public’s criticism of the government, control the news media, and lead the country’s external propaganda work. In Western democracies, what is regarded as soft power behavior, when it occurs in a country dominated by a totalitarian government, the government not only limits domestic civil liberty but also manipulate the perception of citizens of other countries. On account of this, a totalitarian state like China, even when exercising soft power, will be exposed by the international community as it is now and accused of wielding sharp power (Walker &
Ludwig, 2017).
(2) Therefore, the degree of openness on civil society has become an important basis for judging the exercised power is sharp power. The temptation and attractiveness of a country’s story lies in that the information provided is credible, and credible information is to have “normative values”, and normative values is formed in the civil society. The stories provided by a country that conform to normative values will help to promote the soft power of the country. On the contrary, when a country restricts the freedom of people’s speech, censor the opinions of the people, which result in the lack of voice from civil society. With such an opaque and totalitarian approach, the story told cannot win the recognition of the international community, nor it cannot make its own behavior legitimate in others eyes (Nye, 2018).
(3) When a country is trying to achieve a certain political goal, whether the measures adopted are mandatory. If not, the measures adopted are active or passive. If the measures adopted by a country are mandatory, such as through military deterrence and economic sanction, these acts are direct and have no choice, then these behaviors can be attributed to
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hard power; if a means is belonging to non-mandatory domain, such as through cultural, value appealing, or even via infiltration, manipulation, or bribe political elites, the basis of judgment is whether the positiveness of these actions are active or passive. Soft power is to attract others to cooperate with its own special culture and values, which is a passive and voluntary behavior. Although sharp power is also relying on cultural and political values for attraction, it is driven by initiative to penetrate and buy into the political and media environment of other countries in order to prettify its own image （郭盛哲，2018）.
(4) It involves the process of de-legitimation. By legitimizing certain groups or individuals as representatives of ‘friends’ in their given fields, the Party can de-legitimize by containing, dividing or denouncing others so that critics can be co-opted, neutralized or isolated. “Communists sustain their legitimacy not only by beating political rivals but also by conquering ideological alternatives within civil society, trade unions, churches et cetera”
(Ray & Groot, 2018, p. 571).
However, there are some theoretical deficiencies about sharp power that can be explored by here after researchers to perfect the concept and to avoid the abuse of the concept:
(1) Deficiency in the conceptualization and generalization of sharp power:
The origin of sharp power is based on the political interference of two totalitarian countries, China and Russia to other countries. Therefore, the degree and flexibility of this concept is still far from conceptualization. That is, the use of cross-cases comparison study to verify the original interpretation is needed. In other words, do other countries conform to the attributes of China in exercising sharp power? And whether the use of sharp power only belong to state as we have seen in the definition, or the concept can also be applied to
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individuals, groups, and any actors? Like the concept of hard power and soft power, can be mastered by different actors.
(2) How to measure sharp power:
Realist scholars believe that the concept of power can be measured through population, territory, economic development, number of troop and military weapons. On January 8, 2019, when Nye (2018) commented on sharp power after the report from NED and magazine from the Economist was published, he argued that “sharp power is a type of hard power”. Given that, can the measurement and determination of sharp power be analyzed from the perspective of power of resource elements? For instance, the strength of sharp power is determined by the country’s completeness of national power elements, the degree of military and economic development. In other words, in terms of the information manipulated by the authoritarian states against democratic countries, whether the big country has more “hard power” than the small country, will it have more sharp power than the small country? Or, even if the small country does not have “hard power” assets, can it still develop or have advantages in sharp power? Or, some small countries may not be able to exercise sharp power due to the lack of hard power?
To sum up, we can determine whether the influence of a country’s output falls into the league of sharp power analysis by evaluating the state’s regime, the openness of civil society, and the measures of wielding influence. According to Walker & Ludwig (2017, p.6), “What we have to date understood as authoritarian ‘soft power’ is better categorized as ‘sharp power’ that pierces, penetrates, or perforates the political and information environments in the targeted countries”. In the articles of the two authors and other scholars, this definition is likewise adopted very constantly, and more attribute descriptions are
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added on top of this, including how sharp power generates “distraction”, “manipulation”,
“self-censor”, “suppression”, “co-optation”, “exploitation”, “inoculate”, “subversion”,
“infiltration”, etc., these non-mandatory but highly active attributes.
Therefore, I consider the emergence of sharp power reinforce the analysis of “Chinese soft power”. Because many discourses about power often neglect to demonstrate “what effect does it have on which objects”, which lacked a systematic analysis on the role of soft power resources in different scopes and domains. However, after the emergence of “sharp power”, the interpretation of “Chinese soft power” can be largely improved, because sharp power considers the domain, “who is influenced by China” (such as neighboring countries) and scope, “how China affect” (infiltration, inducement, penetration those above-mentioned attributes), which produced better opportunities for further precise verification in the future. Especially, there are many reports and articles, different mouths but same voice, investigated the negative impact of China’s soft power influence, and exposed the political purposes under the benign appearance of the CCP.
However, when the definition of sharp power is repeatedly quoted or debated by different actors, this concept gradually extended even more negative attributes, including “threats”, “coercion”, “bullying”, “intimidation”, etc., these hard power attributes that primarily based on the “economic incentive”. China through its economic influence, whether the market inducement or acquisitions, funding, donations, etc., matching up with the protocols of the country’s external development to influence either Chinese-friendly, infiltration or even coercion behaviors at many levels. Consequently, it is boldly inferred that the exploit of sharp power is corelated with the hard power of a country, the so-called embeddedness relationship as discussed earlier.
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This argument is unanimous with 吳介民、黃健群、鄭祖邦（2017）, the three authors refer to the “China Factors (中國因素)” as the notion of the CCP use its national financial capacity and global political influence to accommodate economic and political purposes in the China rise era. They define “China Factors” as: “The Chinese government uses capital and other related instruments to engage in economic absorption or integration of other countries or region outside its territory, causing it economically dependent on China, thereby facilitating the implementation of its political goals” (pp. 30-40). According to 楊昇儒（2019）, Wu, Jieh-Min indicates this concept can be refer to the “Chinese influence operations”, and “sharp power” in the western academic circle. He analyzes that the mode of the “China Factors” infiltration is to apply business as “United Front” tool, and handle money, material benefits, or commercial behavior as a temptation exchange mechanism for political purposes, and accommodate it to different countries and regions.
Hence, before going to Chapter 3, this Chapter clearly illustrates how to differentiate sharp power from soft power and hard power from the “power” perspective, and I also argue that sharp power involves the attributes of soft power and hard power when performing, which is the embeddedness relationship. In other words, sharp power is the output of China’s “comprehensive power”. It’s like using the Confucius Institute to sneak political propaganda; and using investment and job opportunities to pressure them to obey the will of the CCP, and self-censor. As a result, it affects not only freedom of expression, but also the politics of the target country. The proposition of sharp power complements the analysis of “Chinese soft power” and alert the world to be vigilant of China’s sharp power, because China, under the party-state system, does not have an independent civil society, social groups, or non-governmental organizations, that is, it must be led by party officials
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or affiliated with government agencies. Public diplomacy under this system is regularly considered as the application of sharp power, increasing the uncertainties and dreads of the international society about China’s expansion.
Although this Chapter helps the readers better understand the distinction between sharp power, soft power and hard power, and offer the academical foundation for further discussion, it still raises a question for further exploration in Chapter 3. Wu, Jieh-Min pointed out that the Western academic community refers to the “China Factors” mainly by the conceptions of “Chinese influence operation” and “sharp power” （楊昇儒，2019）.
And the mode of the “China Factors” infiltration is to adopt business as “United Front”
tool, and use money, material benefits, or commercial behavior as a temptation exchange mechanism for political purposes, and accommodate it to different countries and regions.
For this reason, can the “United Front” operation be regarded as sharp power? What do these two concepts have in common? In Chapter 3, my goal is to answer whether the United Front work is sharp power in terms of their concept and operational mechanism.