ABSTRACT
Chinese policy-makers and scholars have clearly become fascinated with the idea of soft power in recent years. The term now appears frequently in media stories, official speeches and academic publications. As Mingjiang Li reports, his search of a major Chinese database of journal articles found that, on average, eight soft power-related articles were published annually between 1994 and 2000. The number increased to 53 in 2000-2004, before further jumping to 314 in 2005-2007. 1
