Long, hard look at China's soft power

Chinese cultural drive overseas also reflects on western values and can distort image, author says

China needs to understand more about its own identity and values in order to develop effective soft power abroad, says Michael Barr, lecturer in international politics at Newcastle University, England.

Barr, who wrote the 2011 book Who's Afraid of China? The Challenges of Chinese Soft Power, says a key challenge to Chinese soft power lies in the discrepancy between the traditional Chinese values it promotes and modern values emerging from its society.

"Because the Chinese identity is changing, China is having a hard time deciding what is the positive contribution of Chinese soft power," Barr says.

Soft power is a concept coined by political scientist Joseph Nye of Harvard University in a 1990 book to describe the ability to attract and co-opt rather than coerce, use force or give money as a means of persuasion.

In recent years there has been a flurry of Chinese soft power activity abroad, including the establishment of Chinese language centers, the growth of Chinese media and other creative industries.

A crucial characteristic of these campaigns, Barr says, is an emphasis on traditional Chinese values of harmony and peace, which Westerners may have a hard time believing when they witness the problems China faces today, such as territorial disputes.

These traditional values are exemplified by the logo of the Confucius Institute, which features the wings of a dove encircling the earth, Barr says, and by the story of Zheng He, an admiral during the early Ming Dynasty (1368-1644), who commanded expeditionary voyages to Southeast Asia, South Asia, the Middle East and East Africa without colonizing any country.

In contrast, Barr believes a new set of values, including materialism, family focus, care of the environment and good cuisine, are more apt depictions of Chinese contemporary society.

"One of the defining characteristics of today's Chinese society is materialism - to be materially comfortable and secure," he says. "That's universally true of people, and you can see in China where getting rich remains a priority for people."

But Barr says there are deeper values than materialism, such as appreciation of family, well demonstrated by Chinese people's reluctance to put family members in care homes.

"There is a strong sense of responsibility for family, and family ties that in the West we don't have," he says, adding this family aspect also relates to a strong sense of community.

Family values are traditional, but an emerging value is care for the environment, which largely stems from China's severe pollution problems.

The Chinese value Barr believes easiest to promote in the West is that relating to Chinese food, because Chinatown has become a popular entertainment destination in many major Western cities.

"For the Chinese meal, food is not just food, because people eat in a more communal way than we do in the West. There are a lot of values around community and responsibility for each other which is important."

The Chinese government's investment in soft power has been criticized for adopting a top-down approach, but Barr believes this demonstrates double standards because the same approach is used by Western countries in their soft power campaigns.

He cites as an example the US government's funding of black American musicians to perform on the international stage to demonstrate its racial inclusiveness.

The Chinese government's investment is justified, he says, because the country's creative industries still need to catch up with the West. When they do, there may not be a need for government funding.

He hails the setting up of Confucius Institutes, the language and cultural centers affiliated with Western universities, as a soft power success. By July last year, there were 420 institutes worldwide and 590 Confucius classrooms, secondary school classrooms running Mandarin courses by institute teachers.

Some Western academics are skeptical of Confucius Institutes, believing the funding from the Chinese government may influence the academic independence of Western universities that host them. But Barr believes the affiliation is an effective strategy because it helps to target university students, leading to them becoming bridges between Chinese and Western cultures when they begin their careers.

"How can we possibly fault that? At Confucius Institutes, people who know nothing about China learn something about China. Chinese teachers who know nothing about England learn something about England. How can that exchange not be good?"

However, other aspects of Chinese soft power are less successful, he says. In his book, he writes of a campaign involving two national publicity films aimed at a US audience between 2009 and 2011. The first film focused on Chinese companies collaborating with overseas ones in producing goods, and the second featured the changes of Chinese society since the country opened up to the world in the late 1970s.

Barr says the films were ineffective because they focused on just the elite of Chinese society, ignoring the fact that most Chinese are still poor.

The films also drew attention to the very issues that made the West nervous about Chinese power, including China's wealth creation and scientific advancement, Barr says.

Besides the government, many Chinese individuals also successfully champion Chinese soft power, he says. They include the Nobel laureate in literature Mo Yan, NBA star Yao Ming and tennis player Li Na.

These contemporary individuals are easier for a Western audience to relate to than historical Chinese figures. They show Chinese people are similar to them, with the same emotions and aspirations.

However, Barr says there is a limit to how much understanding the Chinese government and people can create with the West, because the West's fear of China is more a reflection of its own lack of confidence.

"You see political gridlock in the US political system. You see the worst economic crisis since the Depression. You see large debates over immigration and multiculturalism in the European Union."

This is because China has held the mirror to the West's identity with the country's unprecedented speed of growth - and by following economic rules the West created.

For example, China has abided by the World Trade Organization rules in trading with the West, but many Western countries are still in debt. China is also becoming a scientific power, a value the West championed.

"They're not cheating but they're doing it better. That unsettles the West, and that unsettling is as much about China's success as the West's own lack of success.

"We have some obligations to realize how our own sense of self complicates our reactions to China and makes it a more adverse reaction than it needs to be."

He believes China should be allowed to develop as an alternative to the Western model, not as a threat.

"After all, although China has different ideas about the world, their pursuits are just the same."

cecily.liu@chinadaily.com.cn

(China Daily Africa Weekly 01/24/2014 page32)