Joseph Nye, the academic who coined the term soft power, recently weighed in on the debate about whether China should continue to follow Deng Xiaoping’s approach of lying low and biding its time.
In an interview with the South China Morning Post, the Harvard academic pointed to Beijing’s image problems in Asia and democratic countries.
“I would say that before you dropped the Deng Xiaoping policy, you did not scare other people and you were very attractive. It was good for your soft power. Once you start being a wolf warrior and asserting yourself, you scare people and you lose some of your soft power,” he said, citing various polls.
Although Beijing has effectively ditched Deng’s dictum in the era of Xi Jinping, it rarely acknowledges this publicly or blames itself for its image problem.
As China marks Deng’s 120th birthday this week, the country’s top diplomat Wang Yi has called for concerted efforts to “foster a favourable external environment”.
In an article published last week in the party’s mouthpiece People’s Daily, Wang claimed that China was in a “period of development in which strategic opportunities, risks and challenges are concurrent, and uncertainties and unforeseen factors are rising”.
Without naming the US and its key allies, such as Japan, Wang slammed the “encirclement and suppression of emerging forces” by “individual big powers” but insisted China still faced “new strategic opportunities”.
Wang also offered clues about how Beijing would balance its ties between the West and Russia, saying it would continue to promote its partnership with Moscow but wanted to “explore the right way for China and the United States to get along” and promote “health and stable” relations with Europe.
Despite its regular clashes with the Philippines in the South China Sea, Wang also said China would continue to “deepen friendship, mutual trust and interest integration” with neighbouring countries.
But in a tacit admission of China’s reputational woes, he said the country would need to “comprehensively improve the effectiveness of international communication and present a credible, lovable and respectable image of China.”
Wang also indicated China has no intention of ditching its much-criticised “wolf warrior” diplomacy in exchange for better ties with the West.
“General Secretary Xi Jinping has pointed out … that as long as we maintain confidence and determination, take on responsibilities actively, dare to be good at struggle … we will surely be able to open up new horizons to advance our cause,” he wrote.
Beijing appears largely unfazed by plummeting relations with the US, Europe and other developed countries as a result of its strong-arm approach to maritime disputes and close ties with Russia, Iran and North Korea.
Instead, there are signs it is becoming increasingly ambitious and assertive. Both Chinese and overseas observers attribute this to its confidence about its popularity in the Global South and its bleak assessment that there is little chance to repair its image in the West for the foreseeable future.
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Why Russia might be warming to China’s presence in Central Asia
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Some even argue that even if it does not want to break ties with the West, Beijing would regard that as a price worth paying to secure world power status on a par with the US.
A poll of 35 countries published last month by the US-based Pew Research Centre showed people in 17 countries, mostly middle-income nations in Asia, Africa and Latin America, viewed China’s economic influence positively. But in 24 countries – mostly high and middle-income ones – more people had a favourable view of the US than they did of China.
Respondents in nine of the Indo-Pacific countries surveyed – the Philippines, Japan, India, South Korea, Australia, Malaysia, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and Singapore – expressed concern about China’s territorial disputes with its neighbours. Thailand was the only place where people were not worried.
Meanwhile, in a rare glimpse into how the Chinese public view their government’s handling of the rivalry with the US, a poll last year found 43.9 per cent of respondents believed both sides should be blamed, while 43.8 per cent felt Washington was solely responsible – down from 78 per cent the previous year.
The survey by China International Communications Group and Genron NPO, a Japanese think tank, questioned 1,500 people in 10 Chinese cities. While it may be debatable how convincing a single poll can be, it is worrying that a growing number of people were voicing dissatisfaction with the deepening feud.
That should at least cause concern in Beijing, which needs to do a better job at explaining the rationale behind its current approach to people at home and abroad.
As Nye argued over a decade ago, failing to forge high-quality partnerships and being seen as a bully will hamper its ability to compete with Washington. “In that sense, only China can contain China,” he said.
