Week 6 -- Kristina Nguyen

A person named Joseph Nye had an idea that soft power relies on three resources, which are culture, political value, and foreign policies (Ding 295). Culture, being one of the resources, is because places that have soft power have a culture that is attractive to other countries; political value is seen as a resource due to international relations of how that country's value is upheld abroad; and foreign policies in which other countries can acknowledge that the country with soft power is seen as "legitimate and having moral authority" (295). China is considered a soft power, and while it is seen as beneficial to the country and it's people, there is also an instance where that soft power is harmful for other countries of interest. Beijing has an approach to international relations that does not seem very positive: "Let's do business and don't talk about politics." This approach does not make it seem like China is legitimate, which causes "inharmonious realities [that does] not contribute positively to China's international brand" (304).
China has faced numerous changed brands, but the biggest one was during the 2008 Olympics. During this time, there were some troubles with international relations regarding "the real China" and Western outlooks of China as a whole in which the "real China... is almost invariably conceptualized in relation to something that it is not" (Latham 33). I feel that this is somewhat true of China where they take inspiration from the U.S. with products known to sell quickly, and they try to imitate what it looks like/the function of the product at a lower price which many people like. A lot of the things we have now, with and without realizing, are made from China (whether it is in good quality or not so good quality). I'm pretty sure my lamp from Target that looks like it's made here in America is actually made from China, which I am not surprised with because I know that Americans are active consumers of Chinese goods.

Beijing China at Night.
source: http://world-visits.blogspot.com/2011/10/beijing-china-at-night-view.html

Question: Are there any other countries besides China that have a soft power standing?


Sources:

“Branding a Rising China: An Analysis of Beijing’s National Image Management in the Age of China’s Rise.” Journal of Asian and African Studies.

“The China Quarterly.” Cambridge Core, www.cambridge.org/core/journals/china-quarterly.