From the perspective of economic growth and hard power development indicators, there is no doubt that China has entered the ranks of the world.In terms of economy, China has become one of the world's second largest economies and the world's largest cargo trading countries; the number of Chinese companies on the top 500 list of world companies has exceeded 100. China is one of the world's largest consumer markets and is a country.Enterprises bring incredible business opportunities.
In terms of military, the modernization of China's military power is accelerating, and China's military expenditure has ranked second in the world.As the Shandong aircraft carrier is installed, China currently has two aircraft carriers.China has entered the ranks of the naval country and has become one of the few countries with two or more aircraft carriers.There are many examples of China's hard power development.
With hard power, soft power has become an important part of a country's comprehensive national strength, and it has become an important platform for the influence of great powers.Soft power is a concentrated manifestation of an external attraction, influence and appeal of one country.The concept of soft power was first proposed by American political scholar Joseph Middot;Foreign policy, development model, government governance and national image.
The Chinese government and Chinese leaders pay close attention to the development of soft power, and regard the development of soft power as an important part of the rejuvenation of the Chinese nation.To this end, the Chinese government has invested a lot of money and formulated various policies to support the development of soft power.Regarding the current status and international influence of China's soft power, Western countries have a very different view of China and China.
Western countries (governments, intellectuals, and media) believe that because there is no freedom and democracy, coupled with strict cultural publishing and news review systems, it is generally determined that China's soft power is weak, and there are basically no soft power.On the contrary, China's domestic culture is highly confident. It is believed that the enhancement of China's hard power will bring a soft power improvement. The soft power of Chinese culture has gone overseas and spread overseas.
China's international influence has risen
Objectively speaking, China's soft power has indeed developed in recent years, and China's international influence has also increased.From the perspective of cultural assets, China is an ancient civilization.China has a long and brilliant history of ancient civilization and rich cultural resources, and has the world's largest world cultural heritage evaluated by UNESCO.The rolling Chinese civilization with Confucianism and values as the core is the only civilization in the world that lasted for 5,000 years and uninterrupted.This lays a solid foundation for China's soft power development.According to the data provided by the Headquarters of the Confucius Institute / National Hankan, as of the end of 2018, China has set up 548 Confucius Institutes that mainly promote Chinese and spread Chinese culture in 154 countries around the world.The number of teachers reaches 47,000.
From the perspective of maintaining rules -based international systems, in the face of the increasingly intense trend of international unilateralism and protectionism, the international multilateralism system and the United Nations as the core of the authority have been hit hard.As the biggest beneficiary of existing openness multilateralism, China is also actively advocating and maintaining multilateralism.The establishment of Asian Infrastructure Investment Banks and actively promoting regional comprehensive economic partnership agreements and participation in cope with global climate change all reflect that China has practiced multilateralism with actual measures.This is also a lot of applause for China to win the international community.
From the perspective of active participation in the reform of the international governance and rules system, China has led the establishment of the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (Asia Investment Bank) to show its influence of its development agenda and the continuous rise in the field of infrastructure financing in Asia.In just more than four years, the AIIB has successfully attracted the participation of 100 countries in the world, showing its popularity in the world.China's strong infrastructure financing strength and high efficiency of infrastructure construction make it difficult for other countries, including the United States to compete.
From the perspective of economic and commercial influence, with the strength of China to become one of the world's second largest economies and the largest cargo trading countries, Chinese companies actively invest and expand their business overseas.Extension of He American region.You can see the active figures of Chinese companies and Chinese businessmen around the world.
From the perspective of the development model, China's development experience or the attractiveness of Chinese models to many developing countries is increasing.China effectively takes into account the domestic political stability, economic growth, and social governance balance models, and provides developing countries with new development principles different from Western Washington Consensus.Of course, the Chinese model with its economic development itself also has inherent defects such as environmental pollution, corruption, policy formulation opaque, regional development uneven development, and the expansion of the rich and the poor.This is where the international community questioned the concentration of the Chinese model.
The 2019 Global Competitiveness Report released by the World Economic Forum clearly states that in all competitive assessment indicators, institutional construction is the weakest competitiveness in China.Media freedom, social capital (such as internal social agglomeration and citizen political participation) and corruption indexes and other indicators.
The limitations and dilemma of China's soft power development
Compared with its hard power status, China must be soberly aware that soft power is the weakness of its development, and China's soft power is far from being strong.As a large country that accounts for about one -fifth of the global population, China's soft power and external influence are still weak.The annual global soft power research report published by Portland Public Relations in the United Kingdom is the top 30 (The Soft Power 30) in the top 30 (The Soft Power 30) is the most comprehensive quantitative analysis indicator to measure the development of the country's soft power.This research report is based on subjective (such as international discipline, international interviewees' recognition of relevant foreign policies, food) and objective (government governance, cultural, educational level, economic and commercial influence, digitalization and citizen participation))The two categories of sub -indicators are composed of together.
According to the top 30 soft power rankings in 2019, China ranks only 27th in the world (France ranks first in the world).Except for the eighth ranking in the cultural field, most of the other indicators areas such as education, government governance, digitalization, and foreign policies have been ranked after 20.Compared with many other Asian countries, China's soft power global rankings are even better than Japan (eighth place in the world and the only Asian countries to enter the top 10 global soft power), South Korea (19th in the world) and Singapore (global 21stName) Both are low.
First of all, the influence of Chinese culture in the world, especially the Western world, is still very limited.The Chinese historical palace drama represented by the Kangxi dynasty Zhen Huan Raiders and Rugao Biography is limited to Asian countries and regions concentrated in Chinese concentration.According to the data released by McKinsey in 2019, the export volume of Chinese TV dramas is only one -third of South Korea.Recently, many Chinese media have made Sichuan girl Li Ziyi into an example of the output of soft power of Chinese culture.
Li Ziyi's program describes her culinary characteristic Chinese diet in the green mountains and green water, and packaged a rural animal husbandry -style self -sufficient life.This does attract a large number of audiences (especially young people) who are tired of the crowded and hustle and bustle city life, and eager to stay away from urbanization to return to rural life (especially young people).Judging from the clicks of internationally popular video sharing website YouTube program, Li Ziyi's small bridge flowing water and poetry rural series of Chinese food programs, on this video sharing websiteThere are more than one million clicks to watch.
In terms of business operations, the personal and his program production team of Internet celebrities is undoubtedly successful.But the output of Li Ziyi to the cultural soft power output is a bit overwhelming.According to the data provided by the Financial Times Chinese website and the WebTVASIA (Following Asian Entertainment Film and Creative), the audience groups of the Li Ziyi show are mainly concentrated in Asian regions where the culture is in the same temperature and Chinese concentration, such as Vietnam, Thailand, Indonesia, Malaysia, and Malaysia, and MalaysiaIndia.On the contrary, Li Ziyi has rarely followed the audience in Europe, Africa and America, which is dominated by cross -cultural and non -Chinese backgrounds, and can not talk about entering the mainstream western cultural circle.
Secondly, from the perspective of international image and international recognition, according to the global attitude survey report released by the Pew Research Center in December 2019, the vast majority of the vast majority of the majority of countries in Greece and Central and Eastern EuropeAsia and European countries, as well as the United States and Canada's negative people who have a negative perception of China, are far more than those who have a positive perception.The State of Southeast Asia released by the Singapore Erv Issa Eastern Asia Research Institute also shows that among the Southeast Asian elites' trust in the Southeast Asian elite, China is the lowest in China.On the contrary, the degree of dislocation is the highest.
These survey data reversed the embarrassment of China's current foreign publicity and external image spread.Obviously, the problems of minority nation in Xinjiang, and the continuous demonstrations and violent struggles recently occurred in Hong Kong have caused damage to China's global leadership reputation, and also caused a negative impact on China's international impression.
Third, China's international influence in education, especially in social science research, is still lacking.According to the China Report released by the McKinsey Global Institute in 2019, the number of Chinese students studying in 2017 accounted for only 3%of the total number of global students.From the perspective of the Belt and Road research, since China proposed the Belt and Road Initiative in 2013, the Chinese intellectual industry has set off the heat of the Belt and Road Initiative, and various domestic universities and the Academy of Social Sciences have set up various silk road research institutions or think tanks.
But the embarrassment is that the Chinese academic community has not yet been able to build a Belt and Road theoretical research and policy interpretation system.Most of the research results are analyzed from the perspective of China and lack an international perspective.Or the packaging explains the official propaganda content, saying that it is supported by the original theoretical construction, quantitative data, and detailed national case research as a support.Although the Belt and Road Initiative was proposed by China, China has not yet mastered the international voice of the initiative.
Without the soft power that matches hard power, it is difficult for China to become a real global country, and at most a lame country.Hard power provides a material foundation for the development of soft power (the top 10 countries in global soft power are all economically developed countries), but the enhancement of hard power does not mean a rise in soft power.In the future, there is still a long way to develop China's soft power.The weakness of soft power has become an important factor restricting China's comprehensive strength development.
Soft power requires the recognition and acceptance of the international community, and it cannot be bought by money.The booming development of China's soft power needs to be based on the soil that encourages freedom and create thinking. This is the pain point of China's soft power and the biggest challenge facing its future development.It should not be forgotten that all the sons of the Spring and Autumn and Warring States Periods in Chinese history should not be contended. This is also an era of various ideas and brilliant culture.
How can China develop its own soft power under the pattern of rapidly changing international geopolitical and economy and great powers?How should China use hard power and help it develop soft power?How should China improve its international image?In addition, how should we use China's soft power and international influence in the future?These problems test Chinese wisdom.Development of soft power not only requires self -confidence, but also to prove to the international community, and it needs its (country) letter.
(The author is a senior researcher at the East Asia Research Institute of the National University of Singapore)
This article is written by the author of the English Electronics Magazine of Lianhe Morning Post.
