Chapter 2 What’s the Difference between “Sharp Power” and Other Powers?
2.5 What are the “Decisive Factors” between Sharp Power and Other Powers?
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The purpose of Table 3 is to provide the reader with a clearer comparison of the difference between the four powers regarding its behavior and resources (approach), with this table, the reader can explicitly identify the elements of these four powers when exercising.
Hard power is the act of coercion, deterrence, and enforcement to force another country to yield through threats, military power, rewards, or bribery approach; Soft power is the act of attraction, agenda setting, through values, culture, policies, and customs to fascinate other countries to cooperate voluntarily to achieve their respective goals in a peaceful manner; Smart power is the act of diplomacy, lobbying, good offices, and military demonstrations, combining the attractiveness foreign policy and cultural values, through both hard and soft approaches to cooperate or settle disputes; Sharp power is the behavior of totalitarian states through manipulation, temptation, persecution, bribery, infiltration and self-censorship, by controlling the news media, social elites, and political elites of other countries to disunite or mislead the public opinions of the target country, or cover up and divert the public’s attention from the negative information of the country, in order to shape its positive state image.
2.5 What are the “Decisive Factors” between Sharp Power and Other Powers?
In the previous section, I have elaborated that the differences between the behavior of sharp power, soft power, and hard power and the use of resources (approach). With the introduction of sharp power concept, many originally soft power activities are no longer in the category of soft power, but are regarded as in the sharp power field. However, what factors have caused the difference in the recognition of soft power and sharp power? Also, what factors have led to the difference in the recognition of sharp power and hard power?
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In particular, some power-research scholars believe that sharp power is actually a kind of hard power, it is a disguised version of military and economic power. What kind of argument is this claim based on?
In this section, I will cross-discuss the sharp power with the other two powers, based on the proposition of power-research scholars, and the analysis of collected information.
The purpose is to find out the “decisive factors” between sharp power, soft power and hard power in order to provide the reader with a lucid picture, simultaneously contribute an explicit theoretical basis when compare the meaning of sharp power and United Front in the Chapter 3.
To begin with, there are some discrepancies of the soft power after Nye joined the discussion of sharp power. On the one hand, soft power doctrine asserts that the distribution of power and tangible resources cannot be equated, resources may not represent power, not to mention the resources of soft power and hard power often have asymmetric coexistence (Nye 2004). On the other hand, Nye seems to comply with Huntington’s statement consistent with the mainstream American academic community (Neorealism), believes that the authority of soft power resources is actually the advantages of hard power. For example, he indicated that the leading edge of U.S. information technology is the most significant soft power resource in the 21st century which is what China and U.S. competitors lacks (Nye & Owen, 1996). Countries with the most powerful information technology will be able to offer the most free and self-serving information, dominant discourse hegemony.
According to his argument, if information power is soft power to the United States, then what is the distinction of Russia and China’s information power? Nye and Owen (1996) argued that “credibility” is the winning key to the information overloaded era. The
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competition among countries regarding soft power is to establish the credibility of one’s information, in the meantime destroy the credibility of other countries information. If so, what kind of information is much more credible, and how to make the information more trustworthy than others? When answering this question, Nye deviated from the “tangible resources priority” principle, also appealed to the prestige of normative values. This pronouncement is coherent with the report and magazine from NED and the Economist.
That is, the essential source of soft power is civil society. These arguments assume that a strong country with a democratic society will win the competition of soft power based on information technology. Such a country will not only prevail in the military but also produce the best-selling stories.
According to Nye (2018), he clearly explained the dividing line between soft power and sharp power. In terms of soft power and sharp power, truth and openness are the distinct factors between the two. Nye argued that state advertising and persuasion surely involves some degree of framing, which limits voluntarism. “But extreme deception in framing can be viewed as coercive; though not violent, it prevents meaningful choice” (Nye, 2018). Specifically, when Xinhua, China’s state-owned new agency broadcasts blatantly in other countries, it is making use of soft power techniques, that is normal; yet, when China’s investment in propaganda grown huge, and secretly backs 33 radio stations in 14 countries and even more, “the boundary of sharp power has been crossed, and we should expose the breach of voluntarism”. Moreover, that is a smart move when China employed exchange programs that augmented mutual communication and personal relations among students and young leaders. “But when visas are manipulated or access is limited to restrain criticism and encourage self-censorship, even such exchange programs can shade into
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sharp power”. Nye (2018) believed that due to the lack of an unrestrained civil society, excessive state-led (party control), soft power is essentially regarded as sharp power.
Pursuant to this standpoint, authoritarian countries like China and Russia are not willing to allow their society to have the right to express free will, consequently, they cannot exert soft power at all, or even if they use, they will be like what the world have seen today, that the state-owned soft power have become the exposed sharp power, representing the failure of soft power. In political science, the power of state must be regulated, yet the power exercised by society is not, because the power of civil society is the guarantee for balancing the government from autocracy. In other words, if the difference between soft power and sharp power is that, the former is exercised by civil society, and the latter is not from civil society but a country wants to intervene in the civil society of other country. In this fashion, sharp power itself should be noticed, prevented, vigilant, and restricted.
Nevertheless, why is the information yielded by the democratic society the most credible? Nye and Keohane (1998, p.9) have illustrated that there are three dimensions the democratic society outperform non-democratic society. They claimed that “to be credible, the information must be produced through a process that is in accordance with professional norms and characterized by transparency and procedural fairness”. Hurrell (2006) also contended that the distribution of ideas, rather than material elements, is the key to the soft power competition. International politics are both competitions for material power and legitimacy. That is the degree of recognition that a country has won in the international community. In consonance with Nye (2008), countries with soft power will be apt to make their objectives legitimate, and have moral authority in other’s eyes, which cause it difficult
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for opponents to express their preferences and enhance the advantages in the agenda setting.
Correspondingly, 郭盛哲（2018), explained how to differentiate sharp power, soft power and hard power. He argued that both soft power and sharp power can be regarded as comparison of hard power, which achieve the purpose by non-mandatory means, yet the biggest difference between the two is positiveness (積極性) of taking measures. Soft power is a means of attracting others with their own distinctive culture or values, and willing to cooperate with oneself, which is belonged to passive and voluntary means. Nevertheless, although sharp power is based on cultural values, it is a positive means of taking initiative.
He introduced China as a case to illustrate that as Nye (2004) believes, China has many qualities of soft power that attracts the world; In contrast, the authors of sharp power believe that China is disguised with soft power, in fact, actively trying to prettify other’s perception about it, thus achieve the purpose of intervening other country’s domestic affairs and foreign policy(Walker & Ludwig, 2017; Cardenal, 2017).
郭盛哲（2018) summed up two levels of the three powers, one is whether the power is mandatory or non-mandatory; the other one is whether the power is active or passive.
Table 4 indicates the results of categorizing the three powers on these two dimensions.
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Table 4 Classification of Powers on Two Dimensions
Active Passive
Mandatory A: Hard power C: Contradiction, not yet
appearing
Non-mandatory B: Sharp power D: Soft power
Source: 郭盛哲（2018，頁 34), translated by author.
He explained that A is the traditional hard power, both mandatory and proactive; D is soft power, which is both non-mandatory and passive; C, due to the contradictory state of compulsory but passive, there is no suitable types of power that can be classified; B is the emerging sharp power, it has the same positiveness as the hard power, also the same non-mandatory as the soft power.
In the power study in political science, it involves the analysis on scope and domain.
Nye (2010, p.2) once put, “One must specify who is involved in the power relationship (the scope of power) as well as what topics are involved (the domain of power)”, “even when we focus primarily on particular agents or actors, we cannot say that an actor ‘has power’
without specifying power ‘to do what’”. In his article on Project Syndicate, China’s soft and sharp power, he defined hard power is the ability to influence the behavior of others by coercion and payment; while soft power is the ability to influence the preference of others by attraction and persuasion; sharp power is the ability to change the behavior of others rely on subversion, information manipulation and pressure, which combine to promote self-censorship (Nye, 2018). The common ground of these three powers rest in:
one actor tries to use some approaches to alter the preference or action of another actor, and such motivation and process have given rise to some kind of power relationship
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between the two. In that, what part of an actor, such as behavior, preference, policy orientation, or other changes sharp power have brought? From Nye’s perspective, if soft power changes the preference of others, and that is based on voluntarism and indirection;
while sharp power changes the values of others, especially the freedom of speech, an involuntary result.
Many discussions about the role of soft power resources in different scopes and domains often neglect to clarify what effect does it have on which objects. However, after the emergence of sharp power, the analysis of “Chinese soft power” can have greater progress, because sharp power considers the domain, “who is influenced by China” (such as neighboring countries) and scope, “how China affect” (infiltration, inducement, intimidation), which created more opportunities for more systematic verification in the future.
According to Wang & Groot (2018, p.572), they argue that by using the concepts of legitimation and de-legitimation, which entails “granting rights and privileges to selected social elites via key individuals in order to divide, weaken and isolate others, which in Mao’s times were regarded as ‘anti-Party elements’ or today’s terms, civil society-like elements”; “By legitimizing certain groups or individuals as representatives or ‘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”. I argue that the concepts of legitimation and de-legitimation can distinguish sharp power from other powers, also can explain the relations between sharp power and United Front. According to the article, the purpose of Unite Front is not to win hearts and minds of other countries, but attempt to united all potential allies, in order to strive against common enemy even there are
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significant compromise to make. As a result, the cooperation of both sides is based on legitimacy, for example, both sides are considered as Chinese, which is a source of legitimacy. Because we all agree that we are Chinese, so we can cooperate to confront those who oppose China and harm China’s interests. So, legitimation is a process to stimulating, forming, and sustaining social support, and the other sides is to weaken the legitimacy of others, which is the idea of de-legitimation. Utilize fellow travelers to attack the true enemy for the purpose of de-legitimation of other government and cause fears.
This tactic has two issues to deal with: Firstly, to handle the perception of Chinese people on CCP; Secondly, to enhance the existing opposition and patriotism with targeted society.
However, China’s control on sovereignty is limited, therefore, it must attack others by buying specific people, which is the idea of sharp power.
Exclusively, Nye (2018) illustrated how China’s economic hard power undercut its soft power. For example, the Belt and Road Initiative may seem benign and attractive at first, but when the debtor struggled to make payment on the debt he had taken from the Chinese government, like Sri Lanka port project, the government took control over the port and 15,000 acres of land around it for 99 years. Another case, China punished Norway for awarding a Nobel Peace Prize to Liu Xiaobo, a Chinese human rights activist in 2010.
Since then, its salmon exports to China have plummeted. Also, threatened Australian publisher, Allen & Unwin to restrict access to the Chinese market for a book, Silent Invasion: China’s Influence in Australia critical of China. Clear to be seen, “China’s economic success has generated both hard and soft power at first, but not if the terms turn sour”. Moreover, 張登及（2018，頁 127）considered that Chinese and Russian regimes understand and do not care about that sharp power is difficult to increase their
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attractiveness. Both countries also do not pursue the image of the country’s legitimate and the moral authority.
As specified by Nye (2018), “sharp power is a type of hard power. It manipulates information, which is intangible, but intangibility is not the distinguishing characteristic of soft power. Verbal threats, for example, are both intangible and coercive”. In consonance with Nye, 張登及（2018，頁 127）also claimed that “sharp power is obviously not soft power, but a hard power implemented by a specific regime”; “To put it bluntly, only China and Russia have the ability to display sharp power in the current international system”. He believed that according to the definition, the sharp power wield by Beijing and Moscow is actually “compulsion without gunfire, payment without business” (不聞砲聲的施壓，不 見貿易的收買), in fact, it is a disguised version of military and economic power. 張登及
（2018，頁 128）further argued that from the perspective of Neorealism, there are some inferences have been derived from the proposition of sharp power. Firstly, even if there is a so-called intangible power, these intangible power elements must be attached to and derived from tangible power. Secondly, power based on material capability, whether it is sharp power or soft power, has what realists call, fungibility of power (權力可轉換性).
That is to say, power can flow and transform between different issue areas, especially for great states.
According to Chapter 1.5 and Appendix 1, it is noticeable that the economic power and other actions are almost mutual-affected. China through its economic influence, whether the market inducement or acquisitions, funding, donations, etc., matching up with the guidelines of the country’s external development to influence either Chinese-friendly,
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infiltration or even coercion behaviors at many levels. Consequently, it is boldly inferred that the exercise of sharp power may be correlated with the hard power of a country.
Based on the above discussion, although we can explicitly distinguish sharp power, soft power and hard power from whether the behavior is mandatory and its positiveness, and its polity, we cannot argue that certain form of power is independently exercise out of the other two. As propositioned by 郭盛哲（2018，頁 44-45), he argued that hard power, soft power and sharp power are the relationship of “embeddedness” (鑲嵌). That is, soft power and sharp power are embedded in hard power. He refers to the concept of
“embeddedness” in political economy (Polanyi, 1944; Granovetter, 1985), claimed that hard power can be seen as a complex political and economic action, interweaved with soft power and sharp power in diverse degree in terms of strong or weak, active or passive, which has a profound impact on the process and outcome of hard power. In fact, it is difficult for the three to operate respectively. “However, it should be noted that soft power and sharp power still cannot completely replace non-military action in war. Non-military actions in war still contain a wide range of acts that are in the hard-power domain, such as mass media, psychological warfare, political operations, and economic blockades” （郭盛 哲，2018，頁 44）.