Publication Type

Journal Article

Version

publishedVersion

Publication Date

3-2015

Abstract

As Ming Wan writes in his commentary in The Asan Forum on the “China Dream,” Chinese leaders use New Year’s celebrations as an opportunity to sum up the achievements of the recent past and to chart new directions for the future. Here, I discuss such New Year’s activity to argue that soft power works in interesting and unexpected ways in China. Joseph Nye famously defines soft power as “the ability to get what you want through attraction rather than coercion or payments.” Soft power, thus, is framed as a positive attractive force that is useful for a state’s foreign policy. The concepts of “soft power” and the “China Dream” were linked by Chinese scholars even before the latter became Xi Jinping’s official slogan in 2012. Xi discussed them together most prominently when he declared, to “realize the China Dream,” the PRC needs to “enhance [its] national cultural soft power.” It should not be surprising that these two concepts are now commonly linked by scholars and officials in China, with both being invoked as a response to the “values crisis” provoked by rapid economic growth that has worried China’s public intellectuals over the past few years.

Discipline

Asian Studies | International Relations

Research Areas

Political Science

Publication

Asan Forum

First Page

1

Last Page

3

ISSN

2288-5757

Publisher

Asan Institute for Policy Studies

Additional URL

https://theasanforum.org/the-negative-soft-power-of-the-china-dream/

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