Yao Yao

Director of Center for National Soft Power Research

He is the Director of the Center for National Soft Power Research at China Foreign Affairs University, a national- level institute affiliated to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, P.R.C. He holds a joint Ph.D. in International Communications from Tsinghua University and Harvard University. His study mainly focuses on China -U.S.-EU relations and public diplomacy.

On Dec. 10, 2018, Chinese Vice President Wang Qishan delivers a keynote speech during the opening ceremony of the 2018 Imperial Springs International Forum, stressing that the sufferings and glory of Chinese history are the source of the present.

Soft power, following Professor Joseph Nye’s formulation, rest primarily on three resources which are intertwined with each other: culture, political values, and foreign policies. Actually, both political values and foreign policies somehow generate from the cultural traditions of a nation. Therefore, China’s traditional civilization provides an endless source of invaluable cultural asset for China’s political values and foreign policies, which compose China’s soft power today.

For decades, the West has made all kinds of assessments and predictions about China and Chinese foreign policy. To someone, China is either “Collapsing” or “Threatening”. As China continues to grow, the first theory has collapsed itself. Meanwhile, proponents of the second theory have conjured up new versions recently, especially about China’s foreign policy, which actually always put emphasis on multilateralism and common development.

Then what’s the right way to understand China’s diplomatic ideas?

Confucianism Traditions: Compromising Self and Others

In its several thousand-year history, the Chinese nation has developed the human-oriented concept of loving all creatures as if they are your kind and loving all people as if they are your brothers, the political concept of governing with both virtue and rule of law, the peaceful approach of universal love, non -offense and good-neighborliness, as well as personal conduct to treat others in a way that you would like to be treated and help others succeed if you want to succeed yourself.

Last year, I raised a question to a class of fifty international diplomats at China Foreign Affairs University: “According to Chinese culture, is the life meaning of a gentleman for himself or for others?” Forty-nine students told me for sure, “Of course for others!” “Serving the people - That’s the only idea we know about China.” Only one student doubted and asked: “Isn’t it hypocrisy to live for others?” Perhaps the truth is generally held by the minority. Confucius, the great philosopher of ancient China, points clearly that the life meaning of a gentleman is absolutely “For Self”. That’s the human nature no one could change. However, Confucius also explains that “self” is never independent. In order to perfect himself, a gentleman should always pay attention to others’ interests and feelings. Hence, the core idea of Confucius can be generalized as one Chinese character - “ 仁 (Ren)”, which means caring about others, or spreading one’s love to others.

China’s foreign policy also originates from the ancient philosophy and profound civilization of the great Chinese nation. According to Chinese people’s wisdom, every country while pursuing its own development, should actively seek the common development of all countries. There cannot be sustainable development in the world when some countries are getting richer and richer while others languish in prolonged poverty and backwardness. Such practices as shifting crises onto others and feathering one’s nest at the expense of others are not only immoral, but also realistically unsustainable.

In a word, you can never succeed alone while others suffer a lot. This cultural tradition can perfectly explain the core of China’s soft power which someone in the West always ignores or misreads.

Treating the Weak: Teaching Others How to Fish

Recently, Washington has invented a new term, “Sharp Power,” as created by scholars of the National Endowment for Democracy, refers to the so-called information warfare being waged by China. To be honest, the notion of “Sharp Power” is actually nothing new. In 2015, George Washington University’s David Shambaugh wrote in an essay for the Foreign Affairs Magazine that “China suffers from a severe shortage of soft power even if investing billions of dollars around the world”. According to him, the “Soft Power 30” index made by a British consulting company and mainly on the basis of subjective indicators instead of objective measures, ranks China 25th out of 30 countries assessed.

However, such arguments and indexes ignore the real voices from the Third World. Back to 1979, when deciding to establish formal relations with Beijing, Washington knew clearly about Beijing’s soft power in the Third World. As President Jimmy Carter admitted, “One of the more interesting potential benefits of having China as a friend would be its ability to quietly sway some of the Third World countries with whom it was difficult for the U.S. to communicate”. Even today Carter’s judgment is not out of date at all. According to a report of Pew Research Center in 2017, a median of 47% across the 38 countries surveyed have a favorable opinion of China. Majorities or pluralities in 24 countries give China a positive rating. And it is not surprising that the most favorable views of China are found in developing countries, especially sub-Saharan Africa.

So what’s the right way to treat the developing countries in a weak position?

Soft power cannot be bought, but comes from true feelings. Chinese diplomacy has an unshakable tradition that Africa is always the first destination of the foreign minister’s annual overseas visits in January. When some scholars talk about the sharp power of China, they focus on information warfare techniques and tactics, but ignore principles of its foreign policy. For example, is the soft power of America mainly from techniques or principles? In late 2017, a Pew Research Center survey reveals that America’s much-vaunted soft power, which has long been touted as an antidote to its oft-criticized “hard power” image, is actually enhanced more by pop-culture exports than by its reputation for protecting civil liberties or its ideas about democracy.

The liberal order, which is recognized as the world vision of American principles and ideas, may be designed with good intentions. However, just as Jeff Colgan and Robert Keohane pointed in an essay for Foreign Affairs Magazine, it has obviously been rigged and hijacked by capitals for long. For more than half a century, through vast funding and the leverage of soft power, the U.S. dominates the main economic institutions whose rules and policy paradigms the Third World countries must adhere to: the World Bank, the IMF, and so on. Many people now doubt: Does U.S. use this leverage to represent the best interests of the Third World countries or does U.S. use it to further the interests of powerful lobby groups and big companies? Does it allow the Third World countries to experiment in their own economic policy-making to find what works for them or does it force them to open markets to huge Western corporations?

China has always cherished an independent path of development which suits its national reality. This actually holds the key to the political values of China’s soft power that attracts other developing countries. Besides, according to Princeton Lyman of the Council on Foreign Relations, the U.S. must recognize that much of China’s appeal in Africa is its willingness to respond to African development priorities, such as infrastructure, and to look at Africa as a promising area for investment. The U.S. only recently returned to infrastructure projects under the Millennium Challenge Account, after three decades of absence. However, even today, American investment is still heavily concentrated in the natural resource sector.

In comparison, during his visit to Africa in 2013, Chinese President Xi Jinping put forward two key concepts, which perfectly show China’s diplomatic soft power generated from its traditional culture. The first one is “Nesting to Attract Phoenixes”, which means improving the infrastructures and building a favorable environment to attract more investment and achieve the economic take-off. The second one is “Teaching One How to Fish rather than Giving Him a Fish”, which means that although temporary assistance is helpful, it is more important to help Africa improve their self-development ability and accelerate the process of industrialization.

For years, lacking capacity of “self-industrialization” in many developing countries has become the root cause of the unstable international politics and imbalanced world economy. Hence, the key to the solution actually lies in renovating shabby infrastructure and fostering a complete system of independent industries. According to China’s own experience, enhancing capacity of self-development is the most urgent priority for developing countries to get rid of poverty and instability, which can meanwhile provides the developed countries an opportunity to boost exports and improve employment performance.

According to a report of the Brookings Institution, the right way to view China’s role in Africa is not criticizing it in a way that never hit the nail on the head, but pursuing some kind of third-party cooperation. Given that the U.S. has advanced technology while China has strong manufacturing capacity, only by joining hands can both sides avoid unnecessary competition and increase their market shares. With China’s cost-effective production capacity and America’s world-class equipment and technology, all parties involved in the deal win.

Facing the Strong: Beauty and Beauty Together

In recent years, the whole world witnesses that the United States has become more and more anxious about whether it will be declining or surpassed. In 2016, the then Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump even said “the U.S. has now become a Third World country as compared to infrastructures in Dubai and China”. It is not possible that the U.S. will become a Third World country, but after Trump won the election and adopted an “America First” approach, many commentators say that it will be China’s opportunity to take on global leadership, which makes many Americans even more anxious.

This is another typical misunderstanding about China’s diplomatic ideas. Why is it impossible for China to replace the U.S.? The reason is quite simple - because China is not the United States, or any other powers. Starting from 2,000 years ago, Chinese built and built the Great Wall for self-defense. That is the special characteristics and the very typical expression of the features of the Chinese culture, which generate its current soft power. In his speech at the UN headquarters in 1974, Deng Xiaoping, the then Vice Premier of China, told the world that “if one day China turn into a superpower, and everywhere subject others to her bullying, aggression and exploitation”, the people of the world “should put the label of social-imperialism on her” and “work together with the Chinese people to overthrow it”.

Actually, rather than talking about “leadership”, China prefers to talk about “responsibility”. That’s the reason why China never uses the term “Great Power” to describe itself but replace it with “Major Country”. Major countries have more resources and capability, so they should shoulder more responsibilities and make a greater contribution.

At the UN Assembly in 2017, President Trump mentioned “Sovereignty” 21 times in his 42-minute speech. However, he reveals the real victim, but points out a wronged murderer. China is not the murderer of sovereignty but one of the victims among many developing countries and even some developed countries of the globalization hijacked by uncontrolled international capitals. The Age of Discovery, dating back to the 16th century, established a globalization model with capitals as its core. Since then, coastal regions and seaport cities turned prosperous thanks to the international ocean trade. Henceforth, industry chain located in coastal areas has been fostered rapidly, while inland areas waned, which finally lead to the growing gap between rich and poor all over the world. Trump got elected in the 2016 campaign as he was strongly backed by populists who had not been benefited from the globalization. If we see the voting map of the election carefully, Trump’s supporters mainly live in inland areas while those of Clinton’ s mostly reside in eastern and western coastal cities, which just indicates that the United States, just like Eurasia continent, is also trapped in some kind of the imbalanced globalization.

As for the arguments that China is taking advantage of the U.S. through its economic policies, misunderstandings are leading America to a totally wrong way. According to Chinese Premier Li Keqiang in a press conference in 2017, for those Chinese companies of foreign trade, over 90% of the profits goes to international corporations, and the profit margin of Chinese business is a mere 2 to 3 percent. Indeed, China runs a surplus in trade with the U.S. because of numberless people’ hard work; However, the real beneficiaries are neither China nor any other countries, but big corporations and international capitals domineering over the sovereignties.

Therefore, even if you don’t like Trump and his supporters, you must understand the rationality of their existence. Trump is actually giving a voice to those unheard Americans, who feel ignored by Washington for long. They are actually the sacrificial lambs of the imbalanced globalization which leads to a series of negative effects such as deindustrialization, high debts and high unemployment rate of the industrial workers. The 2008 international financial crisis has taught us that allowing capital to blindly pursue profit can only create a crisis and mislead the working class to lose both jobs and working capabilities.

Therefore, what is the right way to see China’s soft power towards American people? Don’t forget the fundamental reason for China’s rapid development - the hard-working population and the real economy. In 2017, President Xi Jinping noted in G20 Hamburg Summit, that we should “strike a balance between fairness and efficiency, between capital and labor, and between technology and employment”. To achieve this goal, we must ensure synergy between economic and social policies, address the mismatch between industrial upgrading and knowledge and skills, and ensure more equitable income distribution.

In the future, Sino-U.S. relations needs to place more importance on cooperation in education, training, employment, business start-up and wealth distribution-related mechanisms, as progress on these fronts will make economic globalization work better. Over recent years, some Chinese enterprises like Fuyao Glass Industry Group have already set up factories in the Rust Belt of mid-western America and held skills trainings for local young workers. That is actually what China’s soft power can benefit America - exports of the labor spirit and renewal of the real economy.

Succeeding Together

A decade ago, when I studied at Harvard Kennedy School as a Fulbright Scholar, Professor Joseph Nye often told us to pay attention to several “H” in American soft power, one of which refers to “Hollywood”, which indeed catches numberless hearts of people around the globe. I did watch plenty of fascinating Hollywood movies and one of my favorite, entitled Some Like It Hot, which was voted by the American Film Institute as NO.1 of the 100 Funniest Movies, contributes not only the American idol Marilyn Monroe’s best performance, but also a well-known line which perfectly concludes the film’s theme and in my opinion can also be applicable to examine both China and America after 40 years of their diplomatic relations: “Nobody’s Perfect.”

In January 1979, when Deng Xiaoping and Jimmy Carter shook hands in Washington D.C., it symbolized the reestablishment of formal diplomatic relations between “the odd couple” of China and America whose histories and political economic systems are vastly different. However, both Carter and Deng promised to “recognize those differences and make them sources not of fear, but of healthy curiosity; not as a source of divisiveness, but of mutual benefit” because people who are different just have much to learn from each other. In the future, no matter China or the U.S., no matter developing or developed countries, only when getting hard work and real economy back can we truly rebalance and recover the world economy. The dreams that China has followed are summarized by President Xi Jinping as “A New Type of International Relations” and “A Community of Shared Future for Mankind”, which definitely include both “Great Rejuvenation of the Chinese Nation” and “Making America Great again”. After all, if you really understand that no one can succeed alone eventually, you will learn about China’s diplomatic ideas for multilateralism and common development.

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