Question: Soft
power seems beneficial on the surface, but can you find instances, especially
in the case of China, when it can be harmful for targeted countries of
interest?
Even from the period of Chinese dynasties, China has exerted
its soft power through cultivating friendships and encouraging exchanges of
economic and cultural value between places they have discovered through their
expeditions (Ding, 2011) . Since then, China
has remade itself by focusing more on image building and delivering that image
to international audiences than before. China had established a press
conference system, allowed foreign journalists in to the country, and used the
Internet extensively to voice their perspectives on world issues and further
open China up to the global audience. They have also held events and even input
new sets of curriculum in other countries, increasing exposure by sparking
interest in Chinese culture to reach out to both the diaspora and people of
other nations (Ding, 2011) . The results of this
can be seen through the increase in tourism to China.
Soft power may be less than
beneficial if the resulting changes from following the country exerting that power
are not sustainable, and, in the long run, drive the target country downward because
either its people, its industries, or its government were not used to progress
the country in a way that worked best for it, leading to less-than-ideal
results. With China, the measures taken to regulate the input and output of
media sources may have thrown its credibility in expressing the ‘real’ China to
the world into question, as seen through the discourse between foreign and
domestic media during the period of the Beijing Olympics (Latham, 2009) .
The whole process of how ‘doing push-ups’ gained new connotations
was both shocking and intriguing to me, as it showed how quickly and easily the media in certain contexts can influence and add new meanings to things.
My question: Are
there certain traits of a nation that would lead it to have a large issue with the
‘real’ side of itself, similar to China’s situation?
Sources:
Ding, S. (2011). 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, 293-306.
Latham, K. (2009). Media, the Olympics and the Search
for the “Real China”. The China Quarterly / Volume 197, 25-43.
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