A Pew Research Centre poll report published in July 2024 found that across the 35 surveyed countries, more have unfavourable views of China than favourable ones.
A Perception Malaise
Amongst the 18 polled high-income countries, a majority of their citizens bear relatively negative views of China – with exceptions being Chile, Greece, and Singapore. In contrast, amongst the 17 less economically developed countries, a vast majority possess more affirmative views, with exceptions being India, the Philippines, and Turkey. Only 16% of surveyed U.S. citizens, and 21% of those in Canada indicated favourable views, with 81% and 71% unfavourable. Such numbers should worry any observer of China’s relationships with some of its largest trading partners.
It would be rash and unwise to surmise from the above that China thus has a soft power deficit across the board, or that its soft power is dwarfed by the U.S. or the European Union. Indeed, the events unfolding in Gaza and long-standing domestic malaise have considerably undermined the U.S.’ appeal to citizens in the Global South – who increasingly eye the moralising overtones in American foreign policy with suspicion and alarm. Even the Ranking Member of the so-called Select Committee on the CCP in the House, Raja Krishnamoorthi, warned in a 2023 Foreign Policy piece that “The U.S. cannot afford to lose a soft-power race with China.”
The jury is still out on the soft power contest – especially in view of the complexity of an increasingly multi-polar and fragmented world order. A political elite-oriented survey conducted by the ASEAN Studies Centre at ISEAS found that a very slim majority of ASEAN movers and shakers (50.5%) would opt for China, whilst a narrow minority of 49.5% would prefer the US, if forced to choose between the two. That this was the first time Beijing ‘edged’ Washington since the survey began asking this question, suggests shifting sentiments amongst individuals of influence in Southeast Asia.
Neither of these data points can exhaustively reveal the state of play in the Sino-American soft power contest. It would be useful, however, to draw conclusions from synthesising the two. As opined by renowned diplomat Professor Kishore Mahbubani at a recent speech, increasingly trenchant diplomatic rhetoric from China, ratcheted-up anti-China rhetoric by select Western sources, and intensifying strategic rivalry between China and the West across several key dimensions have contributed towards China’s uphill struggle with bolstering its reception in developed economies.
Whilst Beijing has made considerable inroads in courting and winning over political leaders in Global South countries – especially those that have benefited from comparatively generous and no-strings-attached loans and financing offered by China – it has clearly struggled with its image in the conventionally advanced economies of the world, including those comprising G7. Japan and Korea, with long-standing territorial skirmishes and historical animosity (especially the former) with China, have become considerably more skeptical in recent years. Politicians in select European nations, alarmed by the chorus of allegations of purported Chinese domestic interference, are swept up in a frenzy of repudiating any and all deepening of ties with Chinese academic and technical institutions in their countries. Companies, academics, and even investors from China are facing increasing pushback in economies that had historically been more open and accessible to constructive engagement.
Diagnosing the Soft Power Challenge
A standard explanation would often be invoked – especially by those sympathetic to the official Chinese position. They would blame select media outlets in the West for distorting or skewing their coverage of China, perhaps even as a part of a wider strategic gameplan of demonising and stigmatising the government. After all, the best means of winning over an abundance of top Chinese talents, would be to portray China as unequivocally bad, its future inexorably doomed, and the US as more hopeful and promising as the land of the free.
Yet this explanation does not provide for the full picture. China’s struggles with soft power stem from two factors that have become increasingly salient. The first, concerns the strategic judgment by the establishment that projections of political and strategic strength are of the utmost importance. The highly triumphalist discourses and rhetoric adopted by select members of the diplomatic corps over the past decade, are reflective of the burgeoning domestic consensus that China is now a “strong country” and that such comprehensive strength calls for respect – as opposed to affinity and affection – from states around the world.
The second factor pertains to risk aversion within bureaucratic decision-making structures. As a highly sophisticated and multi-departmentally structured bureaucracy, China is by no means immune to the incentives that have long ensnared sprawling, large systems of individuals who are bent on minimising risk (especially of a political or ideological kind) and advancing their careers through prudent and rigorous adherence to key performance indicators. A corollary of this, however, is that the messaging put out by official or state-affiliated sources has tended to exhibit a degree of doctrinal rigidity and argumentative austerity – that may not necessarily appeal to those who are not already convinced by the country’s immense economic growth over the past four decades, as well as its impressive infrastructural and poverty alleviation efforts. Risk aversion within the present bureaucracy produces messaging that preaches solely to the choir, as opposed to the strangers or undecided who crave more information about China.
Fixing the Soft Power Deficit
With that said, there are signs that the sluggish post-COVID economic recovery in China, as well as the intensification of international geopolitical rivalries given the Russian invasion of Ukraine, has spurred Chinese policymakers to rethink their international outreach and publicity strategies. See, for instance, the slew of high-level American business delegations and senior European leaders visiting China over the past 16 months, and the effusive response they received from senior Chinese leaders – who know only too well that the country must strengthen its soft power.
What, then, can China do to revitalise its international image across segments of the West, as well as amongst certain more advanced economies?
China should opt to bring to a contemporary audience the rich tapestry of Chinese cultures and civilisational ideals through bricolage. Consider, for instance, the immense success enjoyed by Black Myth: Wukong, dubbed by The Guardian to be a “fantastically exciting action game.” Cultural preservation and innovation go hand-in-hand, and it is imperative that modern audiences are exposed to the dynamic legacies and wisdom of Chinese intellectuals and thinkers of the past, through exciting new media and grassroots initiatives. Similarly, official media should undertake more deliberate risk in experimenting with digital media, drawing upon online sub-cultures and memes in diversifying their modes of communication. Diplomats and bureaucrats, similarly, could afford to imbue elements of foreign (including but not limited to Western) cultures and cultural references into their discourses – as a means of rendering their messaging more accessible and less perceptually foreign in the eyes of audiences abroad.
Additionally, the China story is told best by the multitude of ordinary Chinese people –individuals with their own aspirations, values, and beliefs. It may well be that some of these voices are not directly and unequivocally affirmative of the state – yet it is the authenticity of these voices, as well as their internal heterogeneity, that fosters a more multidimensional international image of China. A farmer working in rural Shaanxi is likely to have vastly divergent views on where the country is headed, as compared with a Yale-educated haigui living in the skyscrapers of Pudong. Yet both are no less Chinese, and no less reflective of a critical façade and dimension of modern China. The international community would benefit from hearing and exchanging from a much wider cross-section of the Chinese citizenry in both official and unofficial media discourses – in order to develop the understanding that the country is neither a monolith, nor reducible strictly to its political structures and system of governance.
Finally, no story is credible if it is too perfect – too flawless. In its official communications, Beijing would benefit from sharing with the world its past and present challenges, as well as the impediments and difficulties it forecasts as it seeks to undertake much needed economic transformations. Unreservedly, unabashedly positive stories do not make for impactful and convincing pitches. Indeed, the cultivation of soft power requires attunement to the appetite and preferences of one’s ‘target audience’, and an appetite for necessary risk. It is precisely this combination of factors that has enabled American popular culture to take root in many a country across the world. China may have a fair bit of catching-up to do, but I remain cautiously hopeful.
