9 October 2020, NIICE Commentary 6117
Swe Yone Nanddy
The global leadership role of the United States is remarkably softened by the “American First” policy of President Donald Trump and this has provided Beijing the opportunity to step in as a responsible world leader by harnessing its global image; tackling the severe shortage of soft power.
Since 2007, the importance of China’s global image has been highlighted under President Hu Jintao with echoing visions such as “peaceful rise” and “harmonious society” to counter the western narratives of “China threat”. The national effort to link China’s popularity has intensified under his successor, Xi Jinping, who propagated the world with more appealing initiatives such as “the Chinese dream”, “Belt and Road Initiative,” “the Asia-Pacific dream,” “a new major-country relation,” and others.
Soft power, a term defined by Joseph Nye in 1990, is gradually renowned as an asset of global leadership, especially in this era of Information technology and digitalization as it also mitigates the execution of “hard power” as a worldwide problem-solving mechanism. According to Nye, hard power is viewed, by nations, as an ability to influence through threats and rewards, whilst soft power seeks to influence through persuasion and attraction; encouraging others to act as it pleases. The sources of soft power are mainly distinctive but intangible resources such as attractiveness of culture, political and social values and foreign policy. In order to increase its soft power, China has been investing vast funding on public relations around the world but its investments are yet to see a significant return. China’s soft power ventures in Southeast Asia (SEA) are still under potential and are unattractive, despite its wide range of influence.
China has exported its soft power in SEA through a combination of loans, foreign direct investments, economic assistance, promoting tourism and educational programs. In fact, it has developed an economic development model, often mentioned as “Beijing Consensus”; emphasizing on the ‘economic’ development regardless of differences in political values, which alters the “free-market and democracy” combo of “Washington Consensus”. As a region with diverse political systems and values, the governments of Southeast Asian countries were convinced to shift their attention to the development model of China; a combination of a semi-market economy with illiberal polity. The “Beijing Consensus” can be considered as a major means of China’s soft power to many SEA countries.
Given these facts, Chinese government has significantly poured its effort to boost the country’s soft power in the region but these efforts have demonstrated only little payoff as observed in two SEA countries: Cambodia and Myanmar. These two countries share geopolitical concerns and expected economic benefits presented by China. It is noteworthy to examine China’s soft power in them as they possess pivotal importance for China in implementing its ambitious large-scale infrastructure project “Belt and Road Initiative” (BRI) due to their strategic locations, geographical proximity, abundance in natural resources and close ties with the Chinese government.
Cambodia
In recent days, Sino-Cambodian relations gained much attention as the influence of China in the political, economic and cultural sectors of Cambodia becomes more prominent. According to the statistics provided by the Council for the Development of Cambodia in 2011, China ranked first as the largest foreign investor for Cambodia, followed by South Korea, Malaysia, the UK and the US. With the ASEAN-China Free Trade Agreement in 2010, the Sino-Cambodian bilateral trade peaked as the highest in the region. The Chinese aid is relentlessly appreciated by the top Cambodia leaders for being no-strings attached. A vast Chinese diaspora also contributes in projecting China’s soft power by spreading its culture. Generally, only people with Chinese descent observe the Chinese New Year festival, but even some native Cambodians celebrate the Lunar New Year because they believe that it will bring luck and prosperity to them which is indicating the overwhelming Chinese influence in Cambodia. Despite the perception of Confucius Institutes (CIs) as ‘propaganda tools’ of China, there are three CIs in a small country like Cambodia. On the face of glamorous China’s image, skepticism arises as this adhering bilateral relations ultimately threatens the decision-making of Cambodia just as to support China’s position in South China Sea (halting ASEAN joint communique in 2012, preventing any statement referred to South China Sea dispute in 2016) which deteriorates the relations between Cambodia and its ASEAN neighbours. Moreover, it even had to suspend the Angkor Sentinel, annual military drill with the US in 2017. By observing these given facts, the attempts to increase China’s soft power in Cambodia become insincere and unappealing to the other SEA counterparts.
Myanmar
Sino-Myanmar relations offer a different scenario to Sino-Cambodia with Myanmar claiming to have significant reliance on China but its influence on the country still remains limited. The substantial reliance of Myanmar on China began under the military government when it was isolated by the international community and China was the only adjacent nation that supported and invested in the country. However, China has left a negative image in Myanmar as a threatening neighbor which is only to exploit the country in service of its own interest, because of its aggressive nature in expanding its economic projects.
Witnessing peaceful democratic transition of Myanmar and increasing anti-China sentiment in the country, China has realized the need to pour its soft-power resources in the bilateral relations. Aiming to the young generation, China tries to promote its cultural influence through social media applications, a range of social events and cultural exchanges. Nonetheless, the payback is mild, for instance, the user base of WeChat is negligible due to the suspicion about its security.
China has also adopted the policy towards Myanmar that common public finds attractive. China’s participation in Myanmar peace talks and its siding with Myanmar on the Bengali issues strengthened ties between Beijing and NayPyiTaw. China continues to develop its BRI related projects in Myanmar, winning the heart of common people with economic prosperity and development. However, there are certain BRI projects which have negative social impacts on Myanmar population, hence China is perceived as not consistent with its promises. While examining China’s soft power in Myanmar, it is observed that the China is yet to create a descent image among Myanmar people despite its enormous investments in soft power.
Conclusion
Albeit with the billions of dollars China is investing in its soft power, it has yet to see any momentous improvement in its image in Southeast Asia, leaving a vacuum of admiration in its neighborhood. Nonetheless, it is worth noticing that China is eventually realizing “soft power is something to be earned; not to be bought”, since it has developed noticeable approaches such as softer rhetoric, promoting economic diplomacy, showing more generosity and empathy through debt reliefs, practicing the Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence especially with its neighbors and educating its local investors before “going out” to global society. Internal alignment of rigid foreign policy objectives and nascent soft power resources is also highly essential and recommendable for China to live up to its name.
