17 July 2022, NIICE Commentary 8134
Dr. Suvro Parui

In recent years the dynamics of global geopolitics have been wracked with uncertainty. Over the last year of the COVID-19 pandemic, a rising China, a revanchist Russia and a struggling West have added to this, with potential implications for the balance of global soft power. The pandemic itself has had significant implications for the operating context of foreign policy and public diplomacy practitioners. However, China ranked 27th out of 30 nations in the Soft Power 30 index for 2019 and 2020 published by Portland Communications and the USC Center on Public Diplomacy. According to the index, China is a “cultural juggernaut”, being ranked 8th in the Culture category and 10th in the Engagement category.

China’s approach to soft power is still evolving, government officials and academics are using it as a way to integrate international communications, public diplomacy and cultural exchanges. China’s academic community realizes that with the country now the second largest economy in the world, it faces growing challenges in terms of its image and power despite rapid economic growth, rising per capita incomes and deepening involvement in public diplomacy over the past 30 years. It is particularly striking that from 2010 to 2012, uncertainty over China’s image and intentions emerged in the Asia-Pacific region and some African countries, due to disputes over adjacent seas and misunderstandings over foreign investment, respectively.

Chinese scholars have been focusing on Joseph Nye’s influential concept of soft power as it touches on values, communication techniques and the confidence of one’s civilization. Therefore, China has gradually realized that public diplomacy acts as a way to achieve soft power. This has placed public diplomacy at the center of Chinese foreign relations by the end of the first decade of the 21st century. Discussing about the public diplomacy from the academic domain, it is somewhere during 90s when the notion of diplomacy reemerged in public, and appeared in China in the late 1990s among a group of young scholars. They began to research public diplomacy, which had already been influential and popular in the West for many years, using case studies such as the United States Information Agency (USIA) and the strategic propaganda efforts used by the US and the former Soviet Union during the Cold War era. With a heightened awareness of the importance of public diplomacy in the 21st century, researchers have begun to pay more attention to the uses of information, and a number of scholars have participated in developing a national public diplomacy strategy, meaning that the discussion has become much more focused on the needs of the nation. Despite having a very long diplomatic history, until the beginning of economic reforms and opening, China didn’t put public diplomacy in an important position and concentrated propaganda efforts mostly on Third World countries after the 1949 revolution.

The 1989 incident of the Tiananmen Square demonstrations made the Chinese government aware of the necessity of image building and international discourse as part of the reform process. Thus, in the 1990s more attention was paid by Beijing to dialogue and exchanging information in the field of diplomacy. But the Chinese government did not see the full value of public diplomacy until the 21st century. The epidemic of severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) in 2003 prompted the establishment of a government spokesman system and enhanced the development of Chinese public diplomacy. More recently, during the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games, China used its public diplomacy channels to improve its image. Over the past five years public diplomacy has been gaining popularity in Chinese society and shown its face in various ways. In fact, China shares its border land with 14 different countries, that has direct impact on public diplomacy; however, there are other key principles behind the scene: first, to build and enhance the connectivity of mind to portraying the positive image in the international domain. second, stability of public relations in neighborhood policy, where China should brush up in concerns related to sovereignty issues, and third, reinforce a positive image in the arena of developing countries.  The Confucius Institutes, similar to the Alliance Française, the British Council and various US initiatives, are a way to spread public diplomacy. With more than 7,000 Chinese teachers and volunteers going abroad annually in cooperation with more than 100 countries, China has established more than 350 Confucius Institutes and 500 Confucius Classrooms around the world.

At the same time, more attention has been paid to international communication, for example, China Central Television (CCTV) has established new branches in North America and Africa. Another 11 international CCTV channels will be opened soon and five central reporting bureaus and 50 smaller bureaus will be set up around the world to broadcast from the field. As we all are aware about the changing landscape of international politics, hence certainly, the world’s understanding of public diplomacy is still very different from what is found in China. Although the original academic concept of public diplomacy seems to have originated in the US during the early post-Cold War period, historical attempts at public diplomacy have been seen from many different cultures. There were criticisms such as “In what way can an international communications company benefit the country, given ideological differences and that the majority of international reporters are not informed about Chinese society?” Some liberal media went a step further and advocated that the government-corporate joint mechanism should also be applied to domestic politics. The invitation for a public relations company to participate in government activities is a sign of a shift from traditional government omnipotence as government begins to recognize and embrace a professional division of labor and professional values.

Dr. Suvro Parui is an Assistant Professor at Amity School of Languages, Amity University, India.