ABSTRACT
China’s rise in the world involves power calculations in the hard-term sense of tangible economic and military assets but also in the soft-term sense of more intangible attractiveness and imagery. In 2004 Joseph Nye dubbed this soft power; the attractive (i.e. attracting) “means to success in world politics”. 1 Consideration of China’s “soft power” (ruan shili) quickly ensued in the People’s Republic of China, the PRC. 2 Over the years, state-regulated media outlets like the People’s Daily have regaled its foreign reader with articles titled “The Charm of China’s Soft Power”, “Making China’s Charm Visible by Soft Power”, “How to Improve China’s Soft Power Image” and “China’s Soft Power Set for Global Audience”. 3 For its offshoot the Global Times, it is recognition that “soft power is a buzzword often floated around these days in China, with both the government and the public having reached a consensus that the country’s rise cannot do without it”. 4 PRC officials incorporated this into China’s “ ‘smiling diplomacy’, all of which fall under the category of soft power.” 5
