China's charm offensive

As a correspondent for The Economist in East Asia, based in Thailand, one of my reporting assignments was covering the first visit of a Chinese president, Jiang Zemin, to Cambodia in November 2000. This was the first such visit in thirty years - China and Cambodia have had a generally disastrous modern history. (China was the major foreign patron of the Khmer Rouge, and after the genocide in Cambodia there was much lingering anger at all sorts of actors, including China.)

Jiang received a strong public response in Cambodia, not only from local officials whose job it is to do nice things for visiting dignitaries, but from a huge number of schoolchildren who came to welcome him, from the local business community, and from thousands of local officials from all over the country who came to greet him. The Chinese government had done a great deal of preparatory work for this visit. They had invested a lot of money in language schools and cultural programs in Cambodia, built a kind of Peace Corps program there, gave out scholarships for children who would go on to study in China, and created a huge aid program. China had done similar things in other countries. But there was very little coverage of this in the global media, which tended to focus on high-level diplomacy. Accordingly, for the book project I went to China to speak with Chinese officials about how they see their power in the world emerging, particularly in developing parts of the world - Asia, Africa, Latin America - and then went to a number of countries in these regions to look at what China was doing on the ground in these areas. I also wanted to find out what if any results the Chinese had gotten from what we call soft power.

How China's soft power strategy emerges

There are many definitions of soft power, but basically, when the Chinese government talks about its new soft power in the world, it means all power outside of the military sphere, including diplomacy, aid, investment, and economic tools.

One reason for this new relationship with the world is that China has experienced great domestic changes within the past fifteen years. By the 1990s, you saw the growth of a more confident, patriotic, even nationalistic public in China, that, seeing how China had grown significantly, began to talk about China's playing a larger role in the world, a subject that was verboten fifteen years ago. The Chinese leadership also has become much more engaged with the world, with their own think tanks and universities to draw on to develop a more sophisticated foreign policy. These leaders have a more sophisticated view of the world, travel more, and are able to play a larger, more confident global role.

Here in the US we often talk of how difficult it is for the government to change tack when something is perceived as a mistake. This was not the case in China, which in the mid-1990s was somewhat more adventurous militarily, launching missiles into the Taiwan Strait and creating disputes in Asia over islands that China and other countries have made claims to. Beijing recognized that this adventurism was really failing them and that they were alienating countries, some of whom were coming back and restoring their relations with the US.

Finally, there was the Asian financial crisis. The US was widely criticized for responding slowly to that crisis, and you saw the beginning of the decline of America's image in that part of the world. At the same time the Chinese government was fairly proactive. They resisted devaluing their currency and did a lot of good PR for this. Whatever this may have contributed to solving the crisis, they really hyped up that they were standing up for other countries in Asia and got a lot of goodwill from this decision. It was the first time they saw the benefits of promoting their economic activity in the world as a benefit to other nations.

Chinese goals

China has new goals as it has become more engaged in the world. First, it desperately needs access to resources. It has a high level of industrial development, but is a vast consumer of resources. If China was to develop at the same pace as the US and consume the same amount of resources, it would be on a scale unprecedented in the world. As a result, the Chinese government worries desperately where it is going to get oil and gas. The government doesn't have the kind of legitimacy that comes from elections; its legitimacy comes from delivering economic growth. Every time that growth declines or if there's an electricity blackout or the like, the government worries. The Chinese also have been overly dependent on too few oil and gas suppliers in the world. They now look to places they can get oil and gas where they won't be in direct competition with the US or Japan, places like Sudan and other countries where Western nations either can't go because of sanctions or fear to go because the environment is dangerous.

Also, as Chinese companies start to become internationally active, they want to have places they can sell their goods. Again, they often want to go to places where there's less immediate competition with the US - places where the environment is difficult for business.

As they get more influential, the Chinese want more partners in international organizations such as the UN, the WTO, etc.

Isolating Taiwan has been a Chinese goal since the US and the rest of the world recognized China, and in the past few years, as China has become more proactive and internationally engaged, they have sought more to isolate Taiwan, which has informal links with many other parts of the world.

China's strategy since the late 1990s shows recognition that in the US its image will likely be mixed. Therefore, if it could change its perception in other parts of the world and reduce fears of its economic and military power in other parts of the world, it could play a much greater role on the global stage. This is actually quite sophisticated thinking.

Finally, the Chinese leadership to some degree desires in the long run that China be the regional leader in Asia. It feels that the US is an unnatural actor in Asia, owing from the legacy of WWII, when the US was the only country that had the power to play peacemaker role, to guarantee stability in the region. In the long term, they feel, that role would naturally be China's.

Components of China's strategy

Since the late 1990s, China has shifted its foreign policy away from just worrying about the US, as it had been doing to a large extent since Kissinger and Zhou Enlai first met, to a much broader focus. The time they spend in Africa, Latin America, and other parts of the world is evidence that Chinese leaders are putting a much higher priority on those regions, recognizing that because China is also a developing nation, it possibly can build relations with some of these other parts of the world more effectively than the US can. China's leaders can suggest that their country stands on the side of these other countries on issues like trade and technology transfer. Whether or not this is actually true, as a rhetorical device it's quite effective.

China sometimes focuses on countries where the US bilateral relationship is faltering. An extreme case is Uzbekistan. About two years ago there was a significant crackdown on opposition in that country in which hundreds of people were brutally killed. The US has had a closer relationship with Uzbekistan since 9/11, since it wanted bases there. We still have some bases there. But at the time of the crackdown the relationship was downgraded. Immediately after, the Chinese government invited the leader of Uzbekistan for a state visit in Beijing.

You see this at a lower level, too. A good example is the Philippines. The US had long had a good relationship with that country. But in July 2004 the Philippines took its troops out of Iraq, probably in order to save a Filipino hostage. The Bush administration criticized them, and immediately after that the Chinese government announced an enormous aid package for the Philippines and aggressively stepped up its relationship. China recognizes that it can benefit when the US slips. It seeks to convey that unlike the US, it does not interfere with other countries' domestic affairs. It won't tell any country -Sudan, Myanmar or France - what to do. China has won some praise in some countries for this.

China has also become more pragmatic. It does not want to directly antagonize the US or poke a finger in its eye; it wants to still have a good relationship with the US but pursue these other strategies at the same time. For instance, China has a very good relationship with Venezuela, whose Hugo Chavez has made stridently anti-US statements in many forums, including the UN. When he did the same in Beijing, China's ambassador to Venezuela immediately told the local press that China did not want to associate itself with those statements.

Finally, within political systems, China is far less ideological than in the past. Forty years ago, China chose its relations within political systems based on ideology. There's very little of that any more. After rebels in Nepal who took their philosophy directly from Chairman Mao began a war against the king, China's government had to decide who they were going to support. They decided to support the king against the Maoist rebels.

Chinese tools of influence

With very little fanfare until this past year, China has developed into a significant aid donor in the world. China had given out aid in the 1950s and 1960s, in Mao's time, but had retreated from this in recent years. Now, in some countries like the Philippines and Cambodia and parts of Africa, China has actually become a bigger donor than the US or Japan. The money is spent in a pretty sophisticated way, not for building big sports stadiums, which is what China was famous for in the past, but for their own version of a Peace Corps. They spend money on local media and bring politicians and officials from other countries to China to trade. They do what we in America would call building people-to-people contacts, which was hard for the Chinese government to understand in the past.

This comes along with more skilled formal diplomacy. When I was first based in Thailand, you never saw the Chinese ambassador. He was invisible. China now has a new ambassador to Thailand who often appears on that country's equivalent of the Larry King Show. He speaks fluent Thai, and he's perfectly willing to talk about China's relationship with Thailand, a dramatic change from ten years ago. You see this across the Chinese diplomatic corps. They're much more open, much better in English and local languages, and more able to interact with other countries.

This comes along with much increased promotion of cultural and language studies. China has spent a lot of money promoting language studies, funding the first and second year of universities in 100-150 countries.Particularly in poorer countries, they spend a lot of money promoting Chinese studies in primary schools. If you do well there, you can get a scholarship to go on to university in China. Fifteen years ago there were very few foreign students in China–a certain number of Americans who had come on exchange programs, as well as some African students left over from Mao's time. Now you have 110,000-140,000 overseas students in China. (Some, of course, are students who probably would have liked to study in the US but visas have become more difficult to obtain since 9/11.)

Particularly in Asia, China's TV and print media also have become more accessible , and China has begun to invest in the world. On trips abroad, Chinese officials are savvy at suggesting the enormous potential of China's future investment. Right now, China is a pretty small investor in the world. But they talk about huge targets that China's going to bring in the future–$100 billion in new investment in Latin America, for example . It covers up that China is still just feeling its way in the world as an investor.

Finally, China has become a country that embraces trade agreements, which would shock US trade officials of 15-20 years ago. China is now negotiating between 15-20 free trade agreements all over the world at the same time. If you talk to people in the US who negotiate FTAs, they'd say that's impossible, it takes a year to negotiate just one FTA. What the Chinese government does is negotiate an FTA that has very little substance in it, sign it, then work out the substance later. Which brings a lot of good will. Obviously in the US context, one could not say to businesses or Congress, "We're just going to sign a trade agreement, we'll tell you what's in it later."

Matrices of Chinese success

In a lot of parts of the world where there had been fear of China's economic growth, particularly in the developing world, you see much less fear today. This is reflected in the media coverage – even, for instance, in the coverage of exports of tainted goods from China. The Southeast Asia media gives this much less coverage than the US media does. This reflects their much higher degree of comfort with China as an economic partner. If you look at both global and local public opinion polls, China is viewed more favorably in a lot of countries as an actor on the global stage than the US Chinese businesspeople and officials also are now getting access to a lot of countries that once they never would have.

Another sign of China's success is that there's a lot of interest in China's model of development. Countries from Syria to Iran, from Vietnam to South Africa feel that China somehow has done something different from Western countries given its staggering growth rate. China probably doesn't have a substantially different model of development, but the fact that it has developed to be so strong economically without loosening political control is an attractive idea to a leader of an authoritarian country. Vietnamese officials with whom I spoke for my book really want to copy what China has done.

In Asia, local ethnic Chinese historically were viewed as a prism for how to view relations with China. You see this in diaspora communities in many parts of the world. Ten years ago, when I first moved to Southeast Asia, Indonesians were burning down the homes of ethnic Chinese, looting their shops. Now you have an overwhelming celebration of Chinese culture. Indonesia's president talks about it, and local ethnic Chinese there run for parliament.

China, in fact, has increased its allure to the point that it now plays a quite interesting role for other poor nations on its border. In some ways China is now viewed by some of these nations the way the US might be viewed in Central America, or the EU in Moldova.

China is a place you want to get to in order to live a better life. China is still a very poor country, but some of the poorer border countries view China as extremely wealthy. People in Myanmar, northern Thailand, and Laos want to marry visiting Chinese businesspeople, thinking it would get them into China. That's actually not true, but it shows the dramatic change in China's image.

As China has increased its access to resources, it's been able to diversify its suppliers of oil and gas, so that its oil and gas take from Africa has nearly doubled over the past ten years.

Finally, China now has more peacekeepers serving under the UN flag than any member of the Permanent 5 on the Security Council except France. They serve in Africa, the Caribbean, with very little comment or concern, which reflects some degree of comfort with China's presence in these places.

Why soft power matters

China's growing popularity broadens its public appeal and allows other countries to cooperate more closely with it, including on defense cooperation. One Filipino defense official put it to me this way: "Ten years ago in the Philippines, which is a vibrant democracy, with a very free press, if the Chinese had come to us and offered us closer defense training or an alliance, it would have been unthinkable, because it would have gotten out to the public and criticized. Now we know it's essentially acceptable to the public, because China's image has improved quite well, and so the Philippines has pushed forward with closer defense and economic cooperation with China."

So public appeal does matter. Conversely, here in the US we often thought it didn't matter that much, but when it comes to the run-up to the war in Iraq, when you would like cooperation with Turkey, our long-time friend, but Turkey's a democracy now, and the government of Turkey knows that US public appeal is not so strong in Turkey, and we're unable to get their support for an incursion from Turkey into northern Iraq. Rumsfeld himself said that was one of the major factors that hindered the war effort at first.

You see the same thing with economic cooperation–countries in Africa, Asia, other parts of the world becoming more comfortable in their relationship with China, partly because it's easier for them to tolerate China's public appeal. The US still has a very close relationship with Saudi Arabia, but the Saudi government must necessarily be worried about the public appeal of having a relationship with the US It's not surprising that the Saudi government has formed close links to China and thought about building China its own strategic petroleum reserve.

As China has become more influential, opinion leaders from all over the world are visiting or studying there. One of the things the US has always drawn upon is the generations of opinion leaders who had come to the US for education, gone home and been the best ambassadors for the US – Margaret Thatcher, Hamid Karzai, President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo in the Philippines. China is increasingly going to play that role, and that will necessarily impact how other country leaders think of it.

Finally, as China becomes more acceptable economically, it's going to be able to drive Asia as a more integrating trading region. There will be less fear of it and China can drive trade.

Questions

In the short term, China has wielded a significant amount of power. But in the long term it faces very substantial questions, as long as it remains the kind of country it is. First, is China really a model for other countries like Vietnam, Syria, Iran, South Africa? Yes, it's developed and has remained an authoritarian state. But do they really have any different model of development?

Second, as China becomes a greater actor in the world, can it provide the kind of positive goods that the US has provided for years – such as security and response to disasters? After the December 2004 tsunami hit Asia, though the US was very unpopular in a number of the affected countries, those countries had to rely on the US because no one else was able to provide that type of disaster relief. (Actually, the US response to the tsunami did improve its public image among those countries.)

Third and most important, China has gone far with its idea that it, unlike the US, doesn't interfere in other countries' affairs. However, the domestic affairs in a lot of the countries with which China has relations are crying out for some kind of resolution. China has said it won't interfere in Sudan, but many in Sudan would like some sort of interference, because right now the situation is untenable. The government in Myanmar has a close relationship with China. Many people, activists of a movement that was elected 15, 17 years ago, would like China to push the government to recognize them. Noninterference isn't a policy that can exist in the world over the long term. China has begun to think about this. They've sent their own envoy to Sudan, they've thought about changing their relationship with Myanmar. They're realizing that if you're going to be a real global power, you can't necessarily stick with this philosophy. But if they're going to diverge from this philosophy, are they then just going to be like the US? Or can they be somehow something different at the same time?