China in recent years has been pursuing its national interests through its exercise internationally of soft power and economic power as it projects a nonconfrontational, friendly diplomacy to states in developing regions. China is using its soft-power projection to promote its own national interests, not as a direct challenge to the United States.

It is China’s rapid economic expansion that is driving its state development forward, and the country’s need for natural resources, viable export markets, and political influence has led China to step up its engagement with developing countries.

The measurable benefit to China of its economic and soft-power initiatives in the developing world has yet to be assessed or realized, primarily because of the future orientation of many of its programs.

Southeast Asia is the area of the world where China’s use of soft power has been most significant, especially in the mainland Southeast Asian countries of Vietnam, Thailand, and Laos. China’s concern for maintaining a peaceful, stable periphery drives this effort.

The focus of Chinese initiatives in many states is ensuring access to viable energy sources, and soft power plays a significant role in solidifying energy relationships in the Middle East, Africa, and elsewhere. In Latin America, China has actively leveraged soft power and economic power to maintain access to energy resources and markets as well as to gain support for its one-China policy.

In China extensive debate is ongoing regarding the source of the country’s soft power and its reasons for utilizing it. China currently lacks a coordinated national soft-power strategy and views its soft power as defensive and largely reactive, a point of view intended to allay fears in other states of a China threat.

Engaging China on critical global issues such as climate change, energy, and security requires an accurate assessment of Chinese policy, exigencies, and progress in these issue areas. Thus, in the United States, also, debate is taking place about whether China’s soft-power projection represents healthy competition or a strategic threat.

Viewing Chinese successes or failures in the developing world through a zero-sum framework is not an effective way for the United States to shape its policy, and such a point of view will only contribute to an adversarial relationship.

China has not sought to replace or supplant the United States in its role of security provider in the Middle East, Southeast Asia, or Latin America. Thus, U.S. policymakers must recognize China’s objectives of maintaining its own internal stability and economic growth as they craft policies to ensure that the United States promotes its own policies effectively.

The United States can do more to collaborate with China in the developing world, particularly in the areas of energy, health, agriculture, and peacekeeping. If such collaboration were to take place, the United States and China would find themselves working toward a greater global public good.

Joseph Nye Smart Power

This paper subjects Joseph Nye’s advocacy of soft power (recently repackaged as ‘smart’ power) to critical scrutiny, and reflects on the implications for US global leadership.

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Chinese Soft Power and Its Implications for the United States
Competition and Cooperation in the Developing World
A Report of the CSIS Smart Power Initiative

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CONCLUSTION
China has placed special emphasis on the soft-power aspects of its foreign engagement, playing both to regional audiences and to a broader global gallery to whom it seeks to portray itself as a nonthreatening and responsible international power. China’s rapidly expanding engagement in the developing world in particular has provoked a range of reactions around the world.

In developing regions, many hold high hopes for what China can bring to the table in trade, investment, and alternative development partnerships; others are unnerved by what China’s seemingly insatiable demand for energy, resources, and export markets will mean for fledgling economies, weak governments, and disenfranchised populations. Ultimately, the challenge for developing nations will be whether their governments and their people can harness external engagement—China’s and other key players’ as well—to their eventual national benefit.

In the West, China’s mix of economic engagement and soft power has spurred some fears that Western influence in developing regions will thereby be diminished and that investments in governance, transparency, and accountability will be undermined, particularly in states rich in natural resources but whose governments often lack legitimacy or national vision.

Many Americans in particular are concerned about losing strategic influence to China. Yet, the CSIS Commission on Smart Power, cochaired by Joseph Nye and Richard Armitage, concluded: China’s [perceived] soft power is likely to continue to grow, but this does not necessarily mean that Washington and Beijing are on a collision course, fighting for global influence. First, a number of factors ultimately will limit China’s soft power, including its own domestic political, socioeconomic and environmental challenges. Second, there are a number of critical areas of mutual interest between the United States and China on which the two powers can work together—and in some cases already are. Energy security and environmental stewardship top that list, along with transnational issues such as public health and nonproliferation. . . . [G} lobal leadership does not have to be a zero-sum game. China can only become preeminent if the United States continues to allow its own powers of attraction to atrophy.

We do not yet know how China’s soft-power strategy will play out. Nevertheless the United States can learn from aspects of China’s soft-power engagement, and the United States has reserves of soft power that it has underused in recent years.

Now is an opportune time for the United States and others to proactively engage China on areas of common interest, to strengthen regional capacities to manage the intensifying competition that China and others bring, and to preemptively work to mitigate potential areas of disagreement.

ABOUT CSIS
In an era of ever-changing global opportunities and challenges, the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) provides strategic insights and practical policy solutions to decisionmakers. CSIS conducts research and analysis and develops policy initiatives that look into the future and anticipate change.

Founded by David M. Abshire and Admiral Arleigh Burke at the height of the Cold War, CSIS was dedicated to the simple but urgent goal of finding ways for America to survive as a nation and prosper as a people. Since 1962, CSIS has grown to become one of the world’s preeminent public policy institutions.

Today, CSIS is a bipartisan, nonprofit organization headquartered in Washington, D.C. More than 220 full-time staff and a large network of affiliated scholars focus their expertise on defense and security; on the world’s regions and the unique challenges inherent to them; and on the issues that know no boundary in an increasingly connected world.

Former U.S. senator Sam Nunn became chairman of the CSIS Board of Trustees in 1999, and John J. Hamre has led CSIS as its president and chief executive officer since 2000.

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