China uses `Tai Chi' diplomacy to build soft power
Thursday, 29 November 2007
Ken Fireman
When Xu Jianguo, the Chinese ambassador to Nigeria, visited Nnamdi Azikiwe University in Akwa in February, he didn't come empty-handed.
Xu brought a $10,000 contribution, which was used to buy equipment ranging from camcorders to overhead projectors to facilitate teaching Chinese at the school's new Confucius Institute, according to Sam Omenyi, its deputy vice chancellor.
The source was China's Office of the Chinese Language Council International, which has opened 135 Confucius Institutes worldwide. The office is part of a broad campaign involving investment and diplomacy as well as cultural outreach, all aimed at hastening China's progress toward great-power status.
The campaign, combined with China's economic growth and military modernisation, forms a challenge that U.S. politicians are starting to notice and policy makers will likely be fending off for years. It is a classic example of what Harvard University professor Joseph Nye has dubbed ``soft power'': building authority through persuasion rather than coercion.
``If you're a rising power, as China is, with your military power increasing, one of your major concerns is that other nations don't create coalitions to balance your power,'' Nye said in an interview. ``Soft power is a way to prevent that.''
Guan Anping, a Beijing-based lawyer and former aide to Vice Premier Wu Yi, calls it China's ``Tai Chi approach'' to diplomacy. ``When you fight Tai Chi, you use your opponent's power against him,'' Guan said. ``It's the soft approach to offense.''
The Chinese drive has benefited from a void created by what many nations see as a U.S. retreat from much of the world as it focuses on Iraq and the Middle East, according to analysts.
This was on display in August, when President George W. Bush postponed a summit with Asian leaders and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice canceled a trip to an Asian security summit to focus on the Middle East.
``It is clear that the rise of China's soft power -- at America's expense -- is an issue that needs to be urgently addressed,'' Nye wrote in December 2005. Success in a global information age, he wrote, ``depends not only on whose army wins, but also on whose story wins.''
Some politicians, such as Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards, are taking note. ``China is capitalizing on the United States' current unpopularity to project its own `soft power,''' Edwards, a former North Carolina senator, wrote in the September/October issue of Foreign Affairs. ``In the coming years, China's influence and importance will only continue to grow.''
And just yesterday, Defense Secretary Robert Gates called for ``a dramatic increase in spending on the civilian instruments of national security,'' including diplomacy, strategic communications, foreign aid, civic action and economic reconstruction.
``I am here to make the case for strengthening our capacity to use soft power and for better integrating it with hard power,'' Gates said in a speech at Kansas State University in Manhattan, Kansas.
``We must focus our energies beyond the guns and steel of the military, beyond just our brave soldiers, sailors, Marines, and airmen. We must also focus our energies on the other elements of national power that will be so crucial in the years to come.''
Administration officials deny that they are pulling back from Asia or other regions. ``Far from neglecting Asia, we are more engaged than ever before,'' Gates in a Nov. 9 Tokyo speech concluding a week-long trip to the region.
Still, China has made headway, in part because of the unpopularity of American policies, said Arthur Ding, an international affairs analyst at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore.
China has weakened the influence of the Western-dominated World Bank and International Monetary Fund in the developing world by providing loans that aren't conditioned on the adoption of certain policies, as are funds from the bank and IMF.
In 2005, for example, the IMF was on the verge of a deal with the Angolan government for new loans in exchange for commitments to curb corruption and ensure that oil revenue went to social programs, according to Joshua Kurlantzick, an analyst at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington.
The Angolans broke off the talks at the last minute, and the reason quickly became apparent, said Kurlantzick, author of ``Charm Offensive: How China's Soft Power is Transforming the World.'' China soon offered Angola as much as $5 billion in financing -- with no policy conditions attached.
It is no coincidence that Angola has emerged as one of the biggest sources of oil for China's burgeoning, energy-intensive economy, Kurlantzick said in an interview.
China's no-strings policies have great appeal throughout the developing world, according to Nye. He said governments are rejecting the 1990s-era ``Washington consensus'' of market growth and democratic governance in favor of what he called ``the Beijing consensus'' of a market economy controlled by an authoritarian government.
For all their success, the Chinese have had setbacks. One was the recent spate of safety-related recalls of Chinese-made products, which focused attention on the country's environmental and workplace problems.
Another is Chinese human-rights policies, which Nye calls ``their Achilles heel,'' especially in Europe and the U.S.
One means of assuaging suspicions is the Confucius Institutes, which now exist in 51 countries. They promote Chinese language and culture, train language teachers -- and project a Confucian philosophy that meshes with the Chinese government's political priorities: just as a family should respect its elders, a nation should respect its leaders.
Nancy Jervis, who runs the Confucius Institute in New York, said some U.S. educators initially hesitated to join the program for fear that China would impose political or pedagogical requirements. That hasn't happened, she said.
``People call it `soft power,''' Jervis said. ``I don't know what soft power is, but it's better than hard power.''
Bloomberg
When Xu Jianguo, the Chinese ambassador to Nigeria, visited Nnamdi Azikiwe University in Akwa in February, he didn't come empty-handed.
Xu brought a $10,000 contribution, which was used to buy equipment ranging from camcorders to overhead projectors to facilitate teaching Chinese at the school's new Confucius Institute, according to Sam Omenyi, its deputy vice chancellor.
The source was China's Office of the Chinese Language Council International, which has opened 135 Confucius Institutes worldwide. The office is part of a broad campaign involving investment and diplomacy as well as cultural outreach, all aimed at hastening China's progress toward great-power status.
The campaign, combined with China's economic growth and military modernisation, forms a challenge that U.S. politicians are starting to notice and policy makers will likely be fending off for years. It is a classic example of what Harvard University professor Joseph Nye has dubbed ``soft power'': building authority through persuasion rather than coercion.
``If you're a rising power, as China is, with your military power increasing, one of your major concerns is that other nations don't create coalitions to balance your power,'' Nye said in an interview. ``Soft power is a way to prevent that.''
Guan Anping, a Beijing-based lawyer and former aide to Vice Premier Wu Yi, calls it China's ``Tai Chi approach'' to diplomacy. ``When you fight Tai Chi, you use your opponent's power against him,'' Guan said. ``It's the soft approach to offense.''
The Chinese drive has benefited from a void created by what many nations see as a U.S. retreat from much of the world as it focuses on Iraq and the Middle East, according to analysts.
This was on display in August, when President George W. Bush postponed a summit with Asian leaders and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice canceled a trip to an Asian security summit to focus on the Middle East.
``It is clear that the rise of China's soft power -- at America's expense -- is an issue that needs to be urgently addressed,'' Nye wrote in December 2005. Success in a global information age, he wrote, ``depends not only on whose army wins, but also on whose story wins.''
Some politicians, such as Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards, are taking note. ``China is capitalizing on the United States' current unpopularity to project its own `soft power,''' Edwards, a former North Carolina senator, wrote in the September/October issue of Foreign Affairs. ``In the coming years, China's influence and importance will only continue to grow.''
And just yesterday, Defense Secretary Robert Gates called for ``a dramatic increase in spending on the civilian instruments of national security,'' including diplomacy, strategic communications, foreign aid, civic action and economic reconstruction.
``I am here to make the case for strengthening our capacity to use soft power and for better integrating it with hard power,'' Gates said in a speech at Kansas State University in Manhattan, Kansas.
``We must focus our energies beyond the guns and steel of the military, beyond just our brave soldiers, sailors, Marines, and airmen. We must also focus our energies on the other elements of national power that will be so crucial in the years to come.''
Administration officials deny that they are pulling back from Asia or other regions. ``Far from neglecting Asia, we are more engaged than ever before,'' Gates in a Nov. 9 Tokyo speech concluding a week-long trip to the region.
Still, China has made headway, in part because of the unpopularity of American policies, said Arthur Ding, an international affairs analyst at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore.
China has weakened the influence of the Western-dominated World Bank and International Monetary Fund in the developing world by providing loans that aren't conditioned on the adoption of certain policies, as are funds from the bank and IMF.
In 2005, for example, the IMF was on the verge of a deal with the Angolan government for new loans in exchange for commitments to curb corruption and ensure that oil revenue went to social programs, according to Joshua Kurlantzick, an analyst at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington.
The Angolans broke off the talks at the last minute, and the reason quickly became apparent, said Kurlantzick, author of ``Charm Offensive: How China's Soft Power is Transforming the World.'' China soon offered Angola as much as $5 billion in financing -- with no policy conditions attached.
It is no coincidence that Angola has emerged as one of the biggest sources of oil for China's burgeoning, energy-intensive economy, Kurlantzick said in an interview.
China's no-strings policies have great appeal throughout the developing world, according to Nye. He said governments are rejecting the 1990s-era ``Washington consensus'' of market growth and democratic governance in favor of what he called ``the Beijing consensus'' of a market economy controlled by an authoritarian government.
For all their success, the Chinese have had setbacks. One was the recent spate of safety-related recalls of Chinese-made products, which focused attention on the country's environmental and workplace problems.
Another is Chinese human-rights policies, which Nye calls ``their Achilles heel,'' especially in Europe and the U.S.
One means of assuaging suspicions is the Confucius Institutes, which now exist in 51 countries. They promote Chinese language and culture, train language teachers -- and project a Confucian philosophy that meshes with the Chinese government's political priorities: just as a family should respect its elders, a nation should respect its leaders.
Nancy Jervis, who runs the Confucius Institute in New York, said some U.S. educators initially hesitated to join the program for fear that China would impose political or pedagogical requirements. That hasn't happened, she said.
``People call it `soft power,''' Jervis said. ``I don't know what soft power is, but it's better than hard power.''
Bloomberg