Chapter 2. Literature Review
3.3 Goals and Means of Chinese Soft Power
3.3.2 Means
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or to be afraid of when they think of China. As Xi Jinping once said: “The stories of China should be well told, voices of China well spread, and characteristics of China well explained” (Dynon, 2014). Chinese leaders and strategists see soft power as an opportunity to achieve long-term strategic objectives. It is crucial for Beijing to construct a favorable image of itself with the help of various means. In Russia, people often say:
“First, you build your image. Then your image works on you.” And it is actually true for China (and for any other country): if you are able to convince the world that you are peaceful and do not want to harm anyone, it will be much easier to get what you want in future. Thus, the main goal of China’s soft power is to create a favorable image on the international arena. As Kurlantzick (2007) stated, “changing China’s image and undermining the scenario of a China threat [are] vital to Beijing – and crucial to the future of its foreign relations” (p.53).
3.3.2 Means
In order to reach its goal and create an appealing international image, China uses various means and approaches. All of them could be divided into two main large groups:
(1) economic instruments; (2). cultural means.
Economy
In terms of economic aid and investment China is not a beginner. During the Soviet period, when the relations between Moscow and Beijing were going through serious split, and the Sino-American relations were not established yet, the PRC was seeking to find new friends everywhere it could, especially in the Third world. So, for instance, China had donated US$2.4 billion to help African states from 1956 to 1977 (Joel Wuthnow, 2008). China is also trying to reassure developing nations by signing free trade deals and making free trade concessions. E.g. back in 2001, the PRC offered ten Southeast Asian nations to create a free trade zone between them and China, which automatically put it on the higher position than Japan, which was traditionally viewed as the region’s economy #1 (Kurlantzick, 2007: p.124).
China is also investing enormous sums of money in various scientific and technological projects abroad. Beijing, for example, has close ties with Moscow in this field. One of the recent projects which have already gained the opportunity to receive
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around $100 billion from Chinese investors is the first high-speed railway linking Moscow and Kazan99 (China Review, 2015).100
In 2013, the PRC presented its initiative of “One Road, One Belt” (一帶一路 yidai yilu), which could be also regarded as a part of country's soft power strategy. This project embraces the development of the “Silk Road Economic Belt” and “21st Century Maritime Silk Road”. The goal of this initiative is to integrate the Eurasian continent.
“The project with its land and maritime path components promises to better connect China with the Middle East, Africa, and Europe through its landlocked neighbors in Central Asia and the littoral states of Southeast and South Asia” (Pitlo, 2015). If the initiative works out, it would be considered as a great success of China. Beijing is already investing in some infrastructural objects related to the project, like port the Greek port of Piraeus. This would give China’s Maritime Silk Road an important outlet in the Mediterranean and make the Greek port a key hub for Chinese trade (Wishnick, 2015).
China is trying to be everywhere, spread its influence all around the globe by offering others really attractive packages. And it has succeeded in it. This so-called “hard”
perception of soft power, as we named it in Chapter 2101, is really working. We can take another Chinese initiative – AIIB – as a proof of this statement: the fact that so many countries, including close allies of the U.S, such as Germany, the U.K., and South Korea, are willing to take part in the project speaks for itself.
According to Delisle (2010), Chinese economic development success has been the most significant source of the country’s soft power. The PRC managed to reach really impressive temps of economic growth after decades of stagnation, and this achievement is admired by many other countries. Beijing even managed to weather the 2008 global economic crisis more smoothly than the advanced market economies, which is certainly a big advantage (p.501). However, economic attractiveness still cannot be fully regarded as soft power, as it embraces hard elements. That is why let’s move to the “softer” part of the discussion – culture.
99 Kazan (Казань) - is the capital and largest city of the Republic of Tatarstan, Russia. With a population of 1,143,535, it is the eighth most populous city in Russia. Kazan lies at the confluence of the Volga and Kazanka Rivers in European Russia.
100『 中 俄 戰 略 夥 伴 關 係 可 持 久 性 發 展 嗎 ？ 』 ， 中 國 評 論 新 聞 網 ， 2015 年 05 月 31 日 ， http://hk.crntt.com/doc/1037/7/1/2/103771265.html?coluid=137&kindid=7930&docid=103771265&mda te=0531000209
101 See Chapter 2, Paragraph 2.3.1.
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Culture
There is no wonder that the government of the PRC decided to make culture the central element of Chinese soft power. China is known as one of the 10th ancient civilizations102, meaning that its cultural heritage is really impressive and rich. China definitely has things to share with the rest of the world, so why not use it?
According to Ding (2008), China has been promoting its culture since the beginning of its policy of reforms and opening up. It includes traditional products of culture like acupuncture, herbal medicine, feng shui103, martial arts, Chinese cuisine, literature, religious practice, etc (p.70). Chinese leader Xi Jinping wants his country to be portrayed as a civilized one, featuring rich history, ethnic unity, and cultural diversity, and as an oriental power with good government, developed economy, cultural prosperity, national unity and beautiful mountains and rivers. The PRC should also show to the rest of the world that it is a responsible state that advocates peaceful and common development, safeguards international justice, and makes contributions to humanity. To strengthen China's soft power, the country needs to build its capacity in international communication, construct a communication system and better use the new media and increase the creativity, appeal and credibility of China's publicity (Xinhua, 2014).
In order to spread its cultural influence, the Chinese government is using various media sources, like CCTV or Xinhua News Agency, which are expanding their influence abroad, by broadcasting and publishing news in many foreign languages, like English, Russian, Arabic etc (Branigan, 2011). As it has been early mentioned, China is also actively popularizing teaching of Mandarin all over the world through establishing Confucius Institutes. It also highly encourages cultural exchanges between states, organizes various forums and events for young talents. The recent news from China even shows that the government is thinking over an idea of creating World Talents Organization (世界人才組織 shijie rencai zuzhi), aiming at examining and analyzing the turnover of staff and creating so-called brain bank. The PRC is highly inspired by an interest that other countries showed towards its AIIB initiative, and is ready to produce more ideas (Wang, 2015).104
102 The other nine are Rome, Greece, Egypt, India, Persia, Mesopotamia, Maya, Incas and Aztecs.
103 Feng shui (風水) - is a Chinese philosophical system of harmonizing everyone with the surrounding environment. The term feng shui literally translates as "wind-water" in English.
104 王 輝 耀 ， 『 中 國 可 組 建 人 才 WTO 』 ， 環 球 時 報 ， 2015 年 06 月 02 日 ，
http://opinion.huanqiu.com/opinion_world/2015-06/6569559.html
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Besides media and education, China is also developing its theatrical art, the brightest example of which is opera105, undoubtedly. E.g. every year in late spring Moscow holds the Chekhov106 International Theatre Festival. Theatres from all over the globe visit the capital of Russia during these days to introduce their art to the public. And the PRC is not exclusion. It is a constant guest there: this year, for example, Fuzhou Min Opera Art Development Centre (China) presented Min opera107 called “Women Generals of the Yang Family”. The performance is said to be really entertaining, and the director of the performance hopes that this event will set the stage for further cooperation with Russia in this field (RIA Novosti, 2015).108
Another source of China’s cultural soft power is the Chinese Diaspora. Beijing has managed to rebuild its relationship with ethnic Chinese organizations around the world - from cultural associations to businessmen - and directly appealed to them to help boost the relations between the developing world and the PRC Ethnic Chinese also help to advertise Chinese heritage, promote a good and peaceful image of China, as well as facilitate lobbying and doing business. Beijing also assists in organizing meetings, conferences, and summer camps for children from the Chinese Diaspora (Kurlantzick, 2007: p.101).
As we can see, Beijing is using a wide range of cultural tools aiming at spreading its “soft” influence all over the globe. Yet, it still has shown relatively weak performance in terms of soft power. Let’s move to the next paragraph of the study and see what the limitations and challenges for China’s soft power are.
3.4 Limits of Chinese Soft Power
If we look at all these efforts and initiatives Chinese government is undertaking in order to boost the country’s soft power, we might assume that the PRC is doing pretty well in that sphere. China is actively establishing Confucius Institute, promoting
105 Chinese opera (戲曲 xiqu) - is a popular form of drama and musical theatre in China with roots going back to the early periods in China. It is a composite performance art that is an amalgamation of various art forms that existed in ancient China, and evolved gradually over more than a thousand years, reaching its mature form in the 13th century during the Song Dynasty. It includes various art forms, such as music, song and dance, martial arts, acrobatics, as well as literary art forms. There are numerous regional branches of Chinese opera, of which the Beijing opera (京劇 Jingju) is one of the most notable.
106 The festival bears the name op foe of the greatest Russian writers – Anton Chekov (Антон Чехов).
107 Min opera (閩劇 minju) - a type of Chinese opera from Fujian Province.
108 Труппа китайской оперы Фучжоу представит спектакль в Москве [Электронный ресурс]. – 2015. – 22 Мая. Режим доступа: http://ria.ru/culture/20150522/1065854389.html
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Mandarin teaching and learning, expanding its media branches, investing, involving Chinese diaspora etc. Yet all these efforts are not enough to convince the international society, especially Western one, that Beijing is animated by the best intentions. Why is it like this? What China is doing wrong? Why cannot it convince the rest of the world that it can be regarded as peaceful state seeking mutually beneficial cooperation?
The first reason for China’s relatively weak success in terms of soft power is governmental supervision. We have already discussed that some scholars, like Joseph Nye, for example, highly criticize the governmental involvement in soft power spreading.
Especially when the government is not considered to be a democratic one, like the Chinese one. Strong support of the state and lack of civil society involvement makes Chinese soft power less credible than the Western one. There is one more thing to be added here: Chinese leaders seem to be obsessed too much with soft power. And that could play a low-down trick with them. Interesting perspective towards the subject is suggested by a professor of political science at Beijing Foreign Studies University, Xie Tao. According to Xie (2015), one of the indications of this obsession is that a search on CNKI109 for articles with “soft power” in the title generated 1,777 entries since 2000. The second indication is the sheer number of research centers or programmes for public diplomacy, which is widely viewed by Chinese analysts and government officials as the means to boost China’s soft power. “At least two dozen such centers and programme have been established within universities alone, plus a similar number of them within government-affiliated think tanks.” Xie also points out, that the government of the PRC has spent large sums of money (hundreds of billions of dollars) to improve “the communication capabilities of its media outlets like CCTV, organizing mega-events such as the Olympic Games and Shanghai Expo, funding Confucius Institutes, hosting summits attended by dozens of world leaders (e.g. APEC), and sponsoring forums on regional security and prosperity (e.g. the Boao Forum).” The government justifies such wasteful spending by stating that these events can contribute to China’s soft power. Being obsessed too much with spreading soft power Beijing might not notice that this concept could be just a trap created by an American analyst. The reason for the collapse of the Soviet Union partly rests on its hard power race with the U.S. If China is trying to engage itself in soft power race with Washington, it might also come to no good.
109 The China National Knowledge Infrastructure (CNKI; 中國知網 zhongguo zhiwang)- the world’s largest digital collection of Chinese language journal articles.
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The second reason why Chinese soft power remains relatively weak is connected with the fact that China’s political institutions and official values do not enjoy broad appeal abroad, as well as China’s record on social equity, the environment, international human rights etc (Delisle, 2010: p. 521). And it is true: if you do not regard the regime of any country as trustworthy, respectful mechanism, how can you possibly believe in the ideas it is trying to impose on you. Even those people of Chinese origin can be highly critical about the situation in the country. E.g. one of Chinese human rights activist Chen Guangcheng110 states that the Communists who control China are “many times more dangerous” than the brutal terrorist group ISIS (Harkness, 2014). Taking into account all crimes conducted by the Islamic State and the inhuman nature of the organization; the fact that the PRC was compared with it definitely shows that everything is not that optimistic as Chinese government presents. The situation over the human rights in the country is serious, indeed. The PRC is known for its constant human rights abuses since its establishment back in 1949. Though it seems natural to think that during the second half of the 20th century the situation was worse than nowadays, it is not true. Some say that now human rights abuses in China are at worst since 1989, the year of Tiananmen protests. Last year in March, Premier Li Keqiang announced a rise in the domestic security, or "stability maintenance," budget to 205 billion yuan (U.S. $33 billion). As a result, rights lawyers, writers, journalists, academics, NGO activists, political dissidents and rights activists were targeted with often violent measures under the system (Mudie, 2015). According to the Human Rights Watch World Report (2014), the Chinese government also introduces censorship on the press, the Internet, print publications, and academic research. It justifies human rights abuses as necessary to preserve “social stability.” It carries out involuntary population relocation and rehousing on a massive scale, and enforces highly repressive policies in ethnic minority areas in Tibet, Xinjiang, and Inner Mongolia. Such actions, certainly, do not give the PRC much trust from the international society.
110 Chen Guangcheng (陳光誠 born November, 12 1971) - is a Chinese civil rights activist who worked on human rights issues in rural areas of the PRC. Chen is best known for exposing the horrific “family planning”
practices of the Chinese Communist Party, which include forced abortions and sterilization under the so-called One Child Policy. He is a self-taught lawyer from rural China who became blind at childhood when a fever destroyed his optic nerves.
Chen came to wide public attention in May 2012 when, after four years in prison and two years under house arrest in which he endured beatings for standing up for human rights, he and his wife and two children escaped to the United States. Relatives back home then faced arrest and beatings themselves.
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The third reason related to the limits of Chinese soft power strategy rests on different understanding of the process how one should get what it wants. In Chinese point of view, spreading soft power means “using the country’s external propaganda” (對外宣 傳 duiwai xuanchuan). And the government does not see anything bad in it. However, the Western connotation of this word is negative. The Oxford Dictionary definition for
“propaganda” is the following: “Information, especially of a biased or misleading nature, used to promote a political cause or point of view.”111 As you can see, the connotation is pejorative, indeed. And for Beijing external propaganda means “advertising Chinese achievements and boosting the country’s image overseas.” The word “propaganda” has a positive connotation, associated with such essentially benign activities as the release of the news, general shaping of ideology, or even advertisement (Wang, 2008). When Western people hear the word “propaganda”, they immediately think that there must be something negative happening. While for China it is just another means to spread its influence either domestically or internationally. This misunderstanding and different interpretations may also be counted as reasons for Chinese relatively weak performance in terms of soft power.
The Chinese government has already understood the importance of soft diplomacy when dealing with the international affairs. However, it feels the need to de-Westernize the concept of soft power, because the Western perception is regarded as a threat and cannot be completely adopted by China. That is why Beijing has created its own approach to the concept, where the leading role is performed by the government instead of civil society. China has put lots of effort in order to create a positive image of it abroad, to convince the rest of the world that the PRC is rising peacefully and does not want to be regarded as a major threat. Beijing is ready to build cooperation on the basis of win-win relations, as well as develop and expand its soft power. However, it is not enough to persuade the rest of the world, especially the Western part. The political system of the country along with various issues, like violations of the human rights, Tiananmen, Tibet and Taiwan cases etc., prevent people from trusting China. They are always waiting that Beijing will eventually play some dirty trick. All these make it more difficult for the PRC to succeed in delivering its soft power concept.
111 Propaganda. (n.d.). In Oxford Dictionary.
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Chapter 4 Confucius Institute; Moscow Case
4.1 Introduction to Confucius Institute
Confucius Institute is playing one of the most important roles in spreading of Chinese soft power nowadays. In Chapter 2 we discussed in detail the organization of CI, the work and duties performed by Hanban and some controversy around this particular organization.112 In this part of the thesis we will look closer at the mechanisms used by CI in order to attract its audience; what goals besides teaching Mandarin it sets; how it achieves these goals and what challenges it faces.
According to Barr (2011), Confucius Institute is regarded as one of the successful soft power initiatives “catering to the society”. The main aim of the organization is to
According to Barr (2011), Confucius Institute is regarded as one of the successful soft power initiatives “catering to the society”. The main aim of the organization is to