Why China Is Weak on Soft Power

[Korean]

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/18/opinion/why-china-is-weak-on-soft-power.html

Why China Is Weak on Soft Power
By JOSEPH S. NYE JR.
Published: January 17, 2012

China’s president, Hu Jintao, greeted 2012 with an important essay warning that China was being battered by Western culture: “We must clearly see that international hostile forces are intensifying the strategic plot of Westernizing and dividing China, and ideological and cultural fields are the focal areas of their long-term infiltration,” he wrote, adding that “the international culture of the West is strong while we are weak.”

Essentially, Hu was saying that China was under assault by Western soft power — the ability to produce outcomes through persuasion and attraction rather than coercion or payment — and needed to fight back.

Over the past decade, China’s economic and military might has grown impressively, and this has frightened its neighbors into looking for allies to balance rising Chinese hard power. But if a country can also increase its soft power, its neighbors feel less need to seek balancing alliances. For example, Canada and Mexico do not seek alliances with China to balance American power the way Asian countries seek an American presence to balance China.

In 2009, Beijing announced plans to spend billions of dollars to develop global media giants to compete with Bloomberg, Time Warner and Viacom. China invested $8.9 billion in external publicity work, including a 24-hour Xinhua cable news channel designed to imitate Al Jazeera.

Beijing has also raised defenses. It limits foreign films to only 20 per year, subsidizes Chinese companies creating cultural products, and has restricted Chinese television shows that are imitations of Western entertainment programs.

But for all its efforts, China has had a limited return on its investment. A recent BBC poll shows that opinions of China’s influence are positive in much of Africa and Latin America, but predominantly negative in the United States and Europe, as well as in India, Japan and South Korea. A poll taken in Asia after the Beijing Olympics found that China’s charm offensive had been ineffective.

The 2008 Olympics were a success, but shortly afterwards, China’s domestic crackdown in Tibet and Xianjiang, and on human rights activists, undercut its soft power gains. The Shanghai Expo was also a great success, but was followed by the jailing of the Nobel peace laureate Liu Xiaobo and the artist Ai Weiwei. And for all the efforts to turn Xinhua and China Central Television into competitors for CNN and the BBC, there is little international audience for brittle propaganda.

Now, in the aftermath of the Middle East revolutions, China is clamping down on the Internet and jailing human rights lawyers, once again torpedoing its soft power campaign.

As Han Han, a novelist and popular blogger, argued in December, “the restriction on cultural activities makes it impossible for China to influence literature and cinema on a global basis or for us culturati to raise our heads up proud.”

As long as China is a totalitarian state and the communists are in power, China will never become a superpower, and the foreigners want to see China stay that way, a 3rd world totalitarian county run by an oppressive regime.

Or the Chinese people could change the course of their future by revolting against the CCP the Tienanmen Square Style and become the grand version of Hong Kong or Taiwan. Then other countries will come to respect China and Chinese people like they do for Hong Kong and Hong Kongese people.

 

[canadian icehole]

...China is a totalitarian state...

News Flash: they're not. However, your Northern cousins are.

 

[Korean]

News Flash: they're not. However, your Northern cousins are.

Google calls Chinese government a totalitarian regime.

http://www.hindustantimes.com/techn...ime-like-China-Google/SP-Article1-798075.aspx

India not a totalitarian regime like China: Google
Press Trust Of India
New Delhi, January 16, 2012

Google India, which along with 20 websites is facing criminal case for allegedly hosting objectionable materials, today told the Delhi high court that blocking them was not an option as a democratic India does not have a "totalitarian" regime like China.

"The issue relates to a constitutional issue of freedom of speech and expression and suppressing it was not possible as the right to freedom of speech in democratic India separates us from a totalitarian regime like China," advocate NK Kaul, appearing for Google India, told justice Suresh Kait.

 

[Developereo]

Cultural exception - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Cultural exception (French: l’exception culturelle) is a concept introduced by France in General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) negotiations in 1993.[1] Some countries had voiced their concerns during the final negotiations of the Uruguay Round that implementation of the GATT principles on cultural goods and services "would undermine their cultural specificity (and unique status), in favour of their commercial aspects".[2]

The purpose of Cultural exception is to treat cultural goods and services differently than other traded goods and services because of the intrinsic differences of such goods and services. Many countries defend the fact that cultural goods and services "encompass values, identity and meanings that go beyond their strictly commercial value".[3] It notably allowed France to maintain tariffs and quotas to protect its cultural market from other nation's cultural products, most notably American films and television. South Korean policy in favor of its movie industry is another example of how cultural exception is used to protect the audiovisual market[4].

Does that mean that France and South Korea are "totalitarian regimes" because they resist cultural invasion?

 

[notsuperstitious]

No, that does not mean France and South Korea are totalitarian regimes. Actually no amount twisted logic would.

 

[Korean]

Does that mean that France and South Korea are "totalitarian regimes" because they resist cultural invasion?

No, every country has a right to Cultural Exception to protect their own culture; this is why Koreans didn't complain when the Taiwanese broadcast authorities required their broadcast networks to have at least one hour of Taiwanese programming during the 6 hour prime time slot(Otherwise Korean content grabs 100% of prime time slots on Taiwanese networks due to the sheer competitiveness of Korean content, thoroughly destroying Taiwan's content and music industry in the process and leaving nothing for the future generation), because Taiwanese have the right take minimal action against foreign content producers to protect their own culture.

What foreigners criticize is the Chinese government's crack down on China's own artists and content producers, by telling them what story they can tell on TV/movie screens and what to sing. This active censorship weakens China's domestic industry, leaving China vulnerable to foreign cultural invasion of China and having no strong cultural product of their own to be used as a tool of soft power in overseas.

 

[SenLin]

But it isn't untrue. China's cultural power is really absolutely nothing compared to it's Han, Tang, Song & Ming times. And with that i mean the "traditional chinese culture", not even modern popular culture.
It will take China many years to reach such level's like US, Japan & even SK have and only if the government allows this. But seeing how restrictive the party is, i have not much hope.

My Girlfriend for example is Chinese but even she watches Anime, J-Drama & K-Drama, listens to J-pop + K-pop & reads manga like crazy because China has very little like this to offer. I bet many Millions of other Chinese do the same.

 

[Chinese-Dragon]

I don't think anyone doubts how much soft power the Western world has.

Our main job is to sustain our economic momentum, I don't think for a second that our soft power will be able to rival that of the West for many decades to come.

As long as China is a totalitarian state and the communists are in power, China will never become a superpower, and the foreigners want to see China stay that way, a 3rd world totalitarian county run by an oppressive regime.

Yep, you can hope so. (And I personally agree.)

But even a 1950's China was enough to push the USA + 16 of her allies completely out of North Korea, and they have been kept out for the next half century, as we can see today.

 

[Korean]

But even a 1950's China was enough to push the USA + 16 of her allies completely out of North Korea

At the cost of the lives of half a million troops plus even more injured. The west wasn't as willing to sacrifice many people to drive out the PLA, who kept coming and coming and coming, each one stepping over the bodies of the fallen comrade who were before them.

and they have been kept out for the next half century, as we can see today.

Once again at the cost of the lives of half a million PLA troops, possibly more because ROK firepower is like 100 times of what it was the last time.

 

[Chinese-Dragon]

At the cost of the lives of half a million troops plus even more injured. The west wasn't as willing to sacrifice many people to drive out the PLA, who kept coming and coming and coming, each one stepping over the bodies of the fallen comrade who were before them.

Once again at the cost of the lives of half a million PLA troops, possibly more because ROK firepower is like 100 times of what it was the last time.

Even at the weakest point in our history, and facing off against the superpower USA + her allies, we were still able to push their combined forces completely out of North Korea.

That was a 1950's China, and we were able to do that.

Today, we are the second largest and fastest growing economy in the world, and the IMF has predicted that we will supass the US economy by 2016.

Now I don't imagine for a second, that we will be able to surpass the "national power" of the USA in the near future. However, the USA has a history of abandoning their allies, like they did when Russia invaded Georgia in 2008, or when North Korea sunk a South Korean ship, bombarded their territory and developed nuclear weapons.

The USA and China now have the largest bilateral economic relationship in the world. Whatever hope you had of getting back North Korea, has vanished a long time ago.

 

[fly2012]

Dude, are you really Korean? I have met so many Koreans and none of them is so obsessed with China. All your posts are nothing else but China bashing. I just feel weird that a guy from a developed country is so obsessed doing this against a developing country unless he has some inferior complex.

First of all, China never claimed it want to be a superpower. Soft power comes with economic power. No developing countries have much soft power. Secondly, no real power cares about whether others like them or not. Self interest is always the most important. Unisted States are hated by a lot of people, so what. Without hard power, soft power is just a joke.

 

[Korean]

The USA and China now have the largest bilateral economic relationship in the world.

The relationship that the US side is happy to drop and go elsewhere(India and Vietnam). As long as the trade isn't balanced, the value of the relationship with China isn't worth much.

 

[Chinese-Dragon]

Dude, are you really Korean? I have met so many Koreans and none of them is so obsessed with China. All your posts are nothing else but China bashing. I just feel weird that a guy from a developed country is so obsessed doing this against a developing country unless he has some inferior complex.

People have long suspected that the aptly-named "Korean" lol is actually an Indian in disguise, as they seem to do a lot on these forums.

They can never argue with their true flags, what can you do. Not that it matters in this case anyway.

 

[Chinese-Dragon]

Double Post.

 

[Developereo]

What foreigners criticize is the Chinese government's crack down on China's own artists and content producers, by telling them what story they can tell on TV/movie screens and what to sing. This active censorship weakens China's domestic industry, leaving China vulnerable to foreign cultural invasion of China and having no strong cultural product of their own to be used as a tool of soft power in overseas.

I was responding specifically to this arrogant statement in the NYT which YOU highlighted:

Hu was saying that China was under assault by Western soft power — the ability to produce outcomes through persuasion and attraction rather than coercion or payment — and needed to fight back.

This logic can apply to any country that resists American media, including South Korea and France. Media is the greatest weapon of the West's hegemony. Why on earth should China empower these weapons of Western propaganda by giving them free reign over Chinese minds? Any country that does so is cutting their own throat.

As for exerting global soft power, China is up against an entrenched adversary. The Western media will not relinquish space on its perch easily. The Chinese (or anyone else) have a tough job ahead of them.