Sook-Jong Lee is the President of the East Asia Institute and a professor at the Department of Public Administration at Sungkyunkwan University.

I. Assessing China’s Soft Power into a Balance Sheet

China’s impressive rise is essentially China’s economic rise. With a real Gross Domestic Product growth rate of 9.8 percent from 1979 to 2007, China is expected to surpass Japan next year and become the second-largest economy in the world. China’s exports of US$1,218 billion surpassed United States exports of US$1,162 billion at the end of 2008, and it is already the world’s largest holder of foreign exchange reserves, valued at US$1.9 trillion. This phenomenal economic rise has generated a popular projection that China will surpass the United States as an economic power sometime in the mid-twenty-first century. Considering the fact that China’s economic size today is already a quarter of that of the United States, the contemporary perception of China’s economic influence reflects its future. In this sense, the popular confidence that China’s high performance will continue, which is usually thought of as hard power, actually constitutes China’s soft power. The Asian economy is becoming Sino-centric, with China emerging as the engine of regional growth as it builds up a multilayered export production network with dynamic foreign direct investment in many parts of the country. China’s neighbors increasingly look to Beijing for regional leadership, and China’s own diplomacy has become more confident, omnidirectional, and proactive (Ohashi 2005; Shambaugh 2005). Moreover, China can utilize the resources derived from its high performance to gain diplomatic influence. Rotberg (2008) writes that as China has become the largest investor, trader, buyer, and aid donor in a number of important African countries, it has replaced European, American, and Japanese diplomatic soft power in many nations of the sub-Sahara. The “sticky” economic strength (Mead 2004) of China has been more pronounced lately as the U.S.-led global financial crisis in 2008 has stripped Washington and European governments of the resources and credibility needed to maintain their roles in global affairs (Altman 2009; James 2009).

Despite all these positive signs and the potential of China’s soft power, soft power is the complex “ability to get what you want through attraction rather than coercion or payment” (Nye 2004, x). Payment, a primary channel of exercising a country’s resource power, is not likely to generate soft power if it is not viewed as being committed to mutually beneficial relations. Kurlantzick (2007a) termed China’s public diplomatic practice of transferring its trade, investment, and Official Development Assistance (ODA)–driven resource power to its aid recipients to gain soft power as its “charm offensive.” The effectiveness of this offensive, however, has not been empirically examined from the recipient country’s perspective.

The economic angle of Chinese soft power is better found in China’s developmental model. Characterized as socialist state guidance with flexible market adaptability, China’s model appeals more to many developing countries than the aggressive neo-liberal market reforms of the West. The “Beijing Consensus,” which stresses political stability and the flexibility of states to choose a development path, is attractive to many third world countries whose leadership is concerned with maintaining political control while pushing their weak economies (Wuthnow 2008; Zheng 2009). However, this consensus prompts two questions. One is that China’s ODA is not yet substantial enough to support the consensus in full practice. Brautigam (2008) estimates that China’s annual budget for foreign aid expanded from around US$450 million to US$1.4 billion in 2007. This amount is still much smaller than the average ODA of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development’s Development Assistance Committee countries, which was US$4.7 billion in the same year and US$5.4 billion in 2008. The Japanese contributed US$7.7 billion (US$9.7 billion in 2008), while the United States gave away US$21.8 billion (US$26 billion in 2008). The other problem of the Beijing Consensus is that China’s indiscriminating aid to dictatorial countries is making democratic countries frown, reducing China’s soft power in these democracies. Despite these problems, China’s developmental leadership in the third world is an important source of China’s soft power.

Another dimension of China’s soft power is its increasing leadership in convening countries in multilateral forums. Since moving from its long preferred bilateral relations with periphery countries to multilateral ones, China has been active in various multilateral regional forums such as the Asian Regional Forum, the ASEAN Plus Three, and the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation. China is also exercising convening powers in the Forum for East Asia–Latin America Cooperation (FEALAC) and the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation (FOCAC). The first FOCAC summit was held in Beijing in 2006 as part of China’s “Year of Africa,” commemorating the fiftieth anniversary of China’s diplomatic relationship with Africa. Political equality and mutual trust, economic win-win cooperation, and cultural exchanges were called for at that time (Jiang 2007).

Chinese multilateral diplomacy has not been limited to regional or cross-regional forums; it has also been global. China sends more peacekeepers to various parts of the world than any other United Nations Security Council member except France. In particular, China is actively sending peacekeepers to Africa through United Nations peacekeeping missions. About 15,000 doctors were sent to more than 47 African countries and treated 180 million African patients (Zheng 2009). China has also gained a greater voice in global financial governance by enlarging its voting rights in the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and other financial institutions. Recognition of China as a responsible stake holder in the global financial sys-tem is ironically played out by the United States, whose financial stability depends on China’s cooperation in keeping U.S. Treasury bonds. While the United States has many reasons to hem in China’s growing influence, it is limited by its own lack of resources and ends up encouraging China to take on more global financial responsibilities. Inevitably, U.S. rhetoric that coaxes China to play such a role unintentionally builds up China’s soft power rather than that of the United States’ conventional allies, such as Japan. Simply put, the world, in recognizing China, follows the example of its effective hegemonic leader, the United States.

Challenges to China’s soft power come primarily from its domestic politics. Chinese oppression of some ethnic groups’ aspirations for independence, as in the case of Tibet, invites attacks from human right activists in developed countries. Harsh handling of Chinese nationals who are critical of the Chinese government also draws international criticism. These soft power demerits are counterbalanced by active multilateral political diplomacy. Yet, if such diplomacy mainly involves elites and government officials, individual citizens outside China, exposed to negative media, retain the images of China’s domestic blunders. China needs to guard its diplomatic soft power gains from being depleted by its oppressive domestic political actions.

One other way that China has aimed at enhancing its soft power is through culture. The Chinese government has consciously promoted academic training and cultural exchange programs. China has opened 260 Confucius Institutes in more than 70 countries—40 in the United States alone with the first one established at the University of Maryland in 2004—and plans to set up 500 institutes worldwide by 2010. In Africa, Confucius Institutes have opened in Kenya, Nigeria, Zimbabwe, and South Africa, following the first one at the University of Nairobi (Li A. 2008). The number of international students studying in Chinese universities, often with support from the Chinese government, has also increased to 140,000 in mainland China as of 2006. China has held high-level leadership meetings and training for diplomatic corps from Africa and South Asia. The Chinese education ministry supports vocational education training programs as part of the Addis Ababa Action Plan of the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation (Li A. 2008). Whether transmitting Confucian culture to foreign countries results in increased cultural soft power for China is questionable, however. There is no evidence of Chinese cultural soft power spreading across the Asian region. China is not a producer but a consumer of popular culture and information produced in other parts of the region (Shambaugh 2005; Kurlantzick 2007b).

In sum, it is fair to say that an assessment of China’s soft power primarily based on its economic influence as a trader and an investor is somewhat exaggerated. Chinese developmental leadership in the third world looks more promising in building up China’s soft power as an alternative development model and as a growing ODA provider. On the political front, China’s occasional undemocratic practices deplete its soft power. However, China’s increasingly proactive multilateral diplomacy and an expected visible role in financial global governance help China accumulate soft power. While the attractiveness of Chinese culture as a source of soft power is difficult to measure, it is certain that China lags behind Japan and Korea in integrating East Asia through popular culture at this point...(Continued)