Beijing bids to offset negative press with global soft power initiative.
But is its positive message abroad at odds with the reality at home? asks
Michele Penna
On November 2, Xinhua News Agency
issued its first digital interactive e-magazine in Arabic, called China
Panorama. The new service will focus on in-depth financial reporting and will
target Arab elites and professionals. Its aim is to provide a “better and
deeper understanding of China and Chinese economy”. Xinhua will thus add
another piece to its expanding media network, which already boasts 142 overseas
branches.
In recent years, Chinese media
have rapidly expanded their coverage and improved their products. State support
has played an important role in financing operations. The New York Times has
reported that in 2009 Beijing announced plans to spend billions of dollars to
develop global media and invested $8.9 billion in external publicity.
To understand why Beijing is keen
on financing its media outlets, one has to look at China’s rise in the last 30
years. The The Chinese economy has been growing at breakneck speed and is now
the world’s second largest. Its military strength has been rising fast, too,
with double-digit increases in year-on-year spending. But the country’s appeal
has not followed suit. On the contrary, the latter has actually declined: while
the leftist youth around the world has long forgotten Maoist slogans, many
Asian countries are now worried that Beijing may use its renewed strength
against their interest (for example in the South China Sea dispute).
The Chinese government has
realized the importance of reducing the gap between its hard and soft power and
since 2007 has begun to take soft power development as part of the national
development strategy. In this sense, having a friendly media is the first step
in building a narrative based on “peace”, “harmony” and “win-win situation”
which can reassure others of China’s good intentions.
The authorities speak openly
about this program. According to the People’s Daily, “China needs to take all
kinds of measures to educate the world about China so they can love it.” Nor is
a feeling of cultural competition absent. In January 2012, former President Hu
Jintao stated that “we must clearly see that international hostile forces are
intensifying the strategic plot of Westernizing and dividing China, and ideological
and cultural fields are the focal areas of their long-term infiltration.”
Various media are involved in the
soft power push, including television stations such as CCTV and web-based CNTV,
as well as newspapers like The China Daily and The Global Times. Many are
available in English and open to international readers.
Entertainment plays a role, too.
China’s movie market – which grew by more than 22 per cent in 2011 – is now the
second biggest in the world and in May 2012 the Chinese conglomerate Dalian
Wanda bought AMC for $2.6 billion, creating the world’s biggest cinema chain.
Perhaps not surprisingly, though,
Beijing is not a fan of mainstream social media. Websites such as Facebook,
Twitter and YouTube are banned on the mainland and their Chinese equivalents –
RenRen and Weibo – are used mainly inside the country and are closely
monitored.
When it comes to languages,
Chinese media products are increasingly sophisticated. China Network Television
(CNTV), for one, provides news in Chinese, Arabic, English, French, Korean,
Russian and Spanish.
The authorities’ strategy to make
inroads abroad couples media expansion with the promotion of China’s ancient
culture. The 17th Central Committee of the Communist Party discussed the topic
in 2011 and came up with a guideline to improve the nation’s cultural soft
power. According to the final statement, “China is facing a difficult task in
protecting ‘cultural security’ and feeling the urgency of enhancing its soft
power and the international influence of its own culture.”
In February this year, the
Ministry of culture announced a development plan to double the culture
industry’s output by 2015. Authorities backed it with cash: in the first five
months of 2012 the government has spent 18.5 billion USD in the cultural
sector, up 28.2 percent year-on-year.
A particular beneficiary of the
renewed interest in ancient traditions has been Confucianism, which was
strongly condemned as counter-revolutionary during the Mao era, but has
recently undergone a big revival. The philosopher’s ideas – including respect
for authorities and morality – are being reinstated as principles for a fair
society.
Perhaps the most evident tools of
state-sponsored cultural expansion are the Confucius Institutes, organizations
that provide lessons in Chinese language and culture around the world.
According to China.org.cn, an official Party media, Confucius Institutes and
Confucius Classrooms had reached 691 by October 2010 and were scattered around
96 countries.
As these numbers seem to confirm,
Beijing is trying to improve its image pretty much everywhere. According to a
paper published by Georgetown University’s Institute For The Study Of
Diplomacy, however, there are differences between China’s soft power aims in
the United States, Europe and in developing countries: “in regions such as
Africa, Latin America, and Southeast Asia, where China has been particularly
active, soft power initiatives tend to be tied to key resources, such as energy
resources. Soft power initiatives are also aimed at persuading countries to
renounce official diplomatic recognition of Taiwan and hew to China’s ‘one
China’ policy”.
In the West, instead, “China’s
soft power efforts tend toward subtler and less specifically targeted efforts,
such as producing international culture and history exhibits and participating
in international events (such as the Olympics) while directly engaging foreign
publics through language institutes and media”, says the research.
There is little doubt that
China’s soft power reach is still limited as compared to that of the West,
which remains the cultural center of the world. There is equally little doubt,
however, that the Chinese government has made huge efforts to improve its
position and that China’s credibility is on the rise. The question is: will it
work in the end?
Joseph Nye, the Harvard professor
who first came up with the term “soft power”, is pessimistic. In two articles
published on The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal, he claims that the
Chinese Communist Party will face difficulties in catching up with the West in
terms of appeal because – to put it bluntly – it does not stick to what it
preaches. He argues that internal repression of dissent hardly fits the benign
image that officials strive to portray.
According to Professor Nye, “what
China seems not to appreciate is that using culture and narrative to create
soft power is not easy when they are inconsistent with domestic realities.” The
fact that in China the word “harmonized” is used by netizens as a synonym for
“censored” may signal that there is some truth behind his argument.
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