ABSTRACT
Since Joseph Nye coined the phrase in 1990, the notion of “soft power” has frequently been applied by non-Chinese analysts to describe the purpose of China’s foreign assistance. The most famous example is perhaps Joshua Kurlantzick’s 2007 publication, Charm Offensive: How China’s Soft Power is Transforming the World. However, while much has been written about Chinese foreign assistance and soft power, much of this literature lacks historical and social context. Current studies of Chinese foreign policy, when anchored in theory at all, 1 tend to be based on assumptions made from a realist approach to international relations, which fundamentally limits their capacity to analyse Chinese foreign policy in any depth. Realism assumes that the international system is anarchic, and that states therefore have no choice but to maximise their power in a zero-sum game. Any given nation-state will therefore have a priori interests due to its position in the international system. Realists therefore see any rising state as an inherent threat to existing relations of power, as its interests will by definition be expansion and increasing foreign influence. The liberal institutionalist approach that derives from the same basic assumptions suffers the same limitations. 2 This bias means that while some studies have analysed the relevance of changes in the international environment to Chinese foreign policy-making, taking the state as the central actor, few have examined shifts in priorities and behaviour in relation to the leadership’s changing interpretations of these external changes, or of domestic events. 3 , 4 As a result, the most common characterization of Chinese foreign assistance is that it has been in the past, and still is, particularly in recent years, used by Beijing as a strategic implement to achieve power politics objectives.
