China’s Public Relations and Soft-power

YU Xintian

China’s Public Relations and Soft-power

YU Xintian

China’s diplomatic strategy and foreign policies saw important changes recently in that the soft-power of the national culture was to build up and public diplomacy was to evolve, which aimed at increasingly exposing China to the world concerning China’s state of affairs, policies and values,creating a more objective and amicable milieu of opinions and advancing China’s international image. However, it comes with issues of theories and practices. The author offers her personal perspectives on how to handle relations between pursuing public relations and building national soft-power, how to lift national soft-power by public relations and the need to obviate ideological barriers.

I．Relationship between Public Diplomacy and Soft-power

The Western countries have a long history of public diplomacy. Public diplomacy was first employed in the eras of colonialism and imperialism that pursued by the West to enlighten the elites of other countries while conquering the world by guns and bibles. Public diplomacy saw its modern pattern at the end of Second Ward War and especially a great number of independent nations emerged that prompted the West, the U.S. in particular, put the task of “wining heart and soul abroad” on the agenda. Public diplomacy was flavored with a strong ideological ingredient owing to the two blocs in the cold war, while thrived inthe new stage now that the cold war was over.

To China, public diplomacy is a new bifurcation of diplomacy.Conventional diplomacy, or the interstate diplomacy in other words, remains vitally important, though far from enough.Chinese government must at once work on public diplomacy vis-a-vis the publics abroad to explicate the state of affairs and policy lines of China, which will be hopefully understood,accepted and backed up. All is attributed to the new trends of the world, a challenge to the conventional diplomacy. First, the soaring globalization internationalized domestic issues and vice versa, which calls on people to give up the concept of separating domestic issues from external ones and instead turn to the mindset of reconciling the two pictures. Second, modernization and democratization boost the impacts of the public opinions,home and abroad, on both domestic and foreign policies. Only by good communication between government and the publics while conducting inter-governmental diplomacies, could Chinese foreign policy be profoundly based. Third, world opinions exert an unprecedented influence on public opinions. radios, TV,internet and cell phones and play an important role in the mind and life of the people across the world. Western values, cultures and information dominate the world opinions and impose a great pressure on developing countries. Fourth, there are particular challenges to China. A rapid growing China leads to expectation as well as unease of the world. Different ideologies and social systems give rise to misunderstanding and suspicion of the publics abroad. China’s peaceful development road and harmonious world concept are widely accepted though suspicion and worry remain, though to a lesser extent. China therefore must pursue public diplomacy to meet the above challenges.

Different nations and scholars define public diplomacy differently. My definition reads: in order to pursue national interest and China’s foreign strategy and enhance the soft power of China, government officials and NGOs from home and abroad of the consignment, carry out works to affect the publics abroad,to bring about a tangible and amicable milieu of public opinions,to allow the world perceive, understand and accept China’s state of affairs, domestic and foreign policies and values and to improve China’s international image. The U.S. Information Agency defined public diplomacy in 2002 as “promoting the national interest and the national security of the United States through understanding,informing, and influencing foreign publics and broadening dialogue between American citizens and institutions and their counterparts abroad.”①“What Is Public Diplomacy?” U.S. Information Agency Alumni Association, September 1, 2002,http://www.publicdiplomacy.org/1.htm.PHP Research Institute (“Peace and Happiness through Prosperity”), Japan, defined public diplomacy as: to raise national presence in the community of nations, to raise national image and to work on diplomatic activities on the people instead of the government of a nation as an object.②Masashi Kaneko, et al., Public Diplomacy (Chinese version), Foreign Language Education and Research Press, 2009, p.XI.Part of the definitions of this essay is in common with those of the American and Japanese, others are different. Those in common are: first, the working object is foreign publics; second, the goal is to pursue national interest and prop up national image. Those in difference are: first, this essay underlines foreign NGOs to be consigned to work on public diplomacy in addition to government officials:second, this essay stresses on fostering the environment of objective, amicable public opinions and advancing foreign understanding of the tremendous changes taken place in China,which obviously points to Chinese demand.

Most people agree that public diplomacy contributes to the growing of national soft power, though few have explored the relation between public diplomacy and soft power. Soft power is the phrase Joseph Nye coined to describe foreign policy tools that nations can use to "achieve desired outcomes through attraction rather than coercion."③Joseph Nye, Bound to Lead: The Changing Nature of American Power, New York: Basic Books,1990.In other words, soft power refers to attraction, appetency and influence. Public diplomacy is one of the contents of soft power. Attraction, appetence and influence to foreign countries are all-dimensional as both pointing to government officials and the social publics. Officials and publics or elites and publics inter-influence each other. The U.S. soft power soared after the end of WWII as it initiated and established the UN and other international regimes, which provided public goods and advanced Western values. The U.S. soft power not only exerts influence over national governments, but also renders attraction over the publics of the world. The popular cultures,Hollywood and the American life style even appeals to the youths of hostile blocs. U.S. has also turned to radios, TV, Peace Corps and Fulbright to win heart and soul of the people across the world.“Voice of America” is banned within the U.S. border, an evidence that it specifies on overseas audiences by English teaching, history,news, seemingly objectively reports, in order to transmit U.S.values and vindicate U.S. strategy and policies. This author visited the U.S. Information Agency in 1991. The then chief of the agency candidly told us that their staff should give up the pedantic idea of “freedom of press” and only to work for the U.S. ideologies.China should draw upon Western approaches of public diplomacy. China wants to face not only foreign government officials, but also the publics of all nations. China wants to really step up its influence by means of various communications and dialogues.

Public diplomacy is but one of the ways to build up soft power. There are other ways. China has accomplished great achievement in its reform and opening-up to the admiration of the world. Not a few people want to learn the secret, which is the base of the China’s attraction.

The attraction will fade if China suffers from economic stagnation and poverty, no matter how hard China pursues public diplomacy. Therefore, to focus on China’s own business is a sure way to attract the publics of the outside world. On the other hand,globalization and information revolution strengthened rather than weakened the diversity of cultures.①Joseph Nye, The Paradox of American Power: Why the. World's Only Superpower Can't Go It Alone? Oxford 2005.The publics of world will resort to their own cultures to read and interpret every phenomenon and every event takes place in China. Their interpretation may be far away from the truth or from the intention of China. China should not keep silence, but to communicate with the world, to explicate the facts, the true intention and the trends, and to make the foreigners closer to the truth or at least to prevent their interpretation from being against the truth.

A good national image is one of the important marks of soft power. National image seems virtual, but is a substantial being. It bears on the soft environment of China’s development. China’s national image is viciously distorted owing to the make-ups by Western media and hostile forces and also to the ignorance of the publics of the world. Thus, “China threat”, “China collapse” and“neo-colonialism” prevail. Any event breaking out in China will sacrifice China’s image. The publics of the world recognize China as a splendid ancient civilization though; they virtually overlook China’s contemporary culture and the morale of Chinese.Therefore, China must build up its national image by public diplomacy and promote national image across the globe. France has been selling successfully on the concept of “Great France”including nature, history, language and culture. In order to change the dull national images, UK and Germany especially sold on the slogans of “idea of UK” and “idea of Germany” to the world and quite successfully. China shall build up the image of a responsible power in the world and combine government forces and social forces to persist in public diplomacy. Although public diplomacy raises soft power, they should not be deemed as identical. Public diplomacy is an expansion of diplomatic objects, which further multiplies diplomatic actors, diplomatic approaches and evaluation instruments. Soft power includes ideas, regimes,strategy and policy that echo the concept of hard power and bring about attraction, influence and appetency. Soft power precedes public diplomacy as a concept. Soft power is not to substitute for hard power as a tangible power, but rather permeate and guide the hard power.①Yu Xintian, “Soft Power and Foreign Strategy of China”, International Review, 2008, No.2.Soft power is the goal for public diplomacy to achieve and the guideline for public diplomacy to move on. The misleading ideas of unilateralism and preemptive strategy that U.S. employed to guide its foreign policy in Iraq war had nevertheless compromised its soft power, and the U.S. public diplomacy, very strong though, was helpless. This should take as an unforgettable lesson.

II．Build up Soft Power by Public Diplomacy

China should build up soft power through public diplomacy,though the latter might do more harm than help if it entails wrong perceptions. Public diplomacy seems concrete activities, however,it requires theory and practice to make accomplishment.

As public diplomacy is aimed at advancing trans-cultural communication and reaching international consensus, efforts should be made to dispel misunderstanding and deliberate distortions. Different nations vary in cultures, such as life styles,foods and containers, customs and rites, laws, norms and core values. Trans-cultural dialogues will inevitably give rise to cultural misunderstanding. Understanding consists of fact judgment and value judgment. The Olympic opening ceremony is a unique fact, but can vary in its understandings and judgments,thanks to various cultural backgrounds and personal philosophies.Therefore, a statement of a fact is only the first step, though the vitally important step. It is more important to figure out the fact.To a larger extent, correct understanding unexceptionally comes from misunderstanding. Everyone sifts alien cultures through his/her own culture and through his/her individual experience and mind. Misunderstanding is ubiquitous, either between Americans and French people or between Chinese and Americans.This is a necessary point to keep in mind before misunderstanding can dwindle and right understanding comes about through communication, dialogue and discussion.

Cultures are geographically separate and scatter around,which contributed to misunderstandings in history. Natural barriers to communication deteriorated misunderstandings. This author terms it as imagined misunderstanding, i.e., the cultural images emerged from lack of communication and wrong transmittance of wrong information. Despite honeymoons between China and Soviet Union, China and U.S. and China and Japan respectively during certain periods in the first 30 years of PRC, imagined misunderstandings prevailed to both sides due to little intercommunication among the peoples. Since the outset of reform and opening-up, huge amount of foreigners and Chinese crossed the border of China to do business, to study abroad and to tour, which added practical misunderstanding to the imagined misunderstanding. Practical misunderstanding refers to the difficulty that people understand the issues in real life because of different conduits and approaches available. For instance, capital punishment is abrogated in some countries that accuse countries including China of preserving the “inhuman” capital punishment.To some, public diplomacy is so easy that mere communication and dialogue work immediately, which is a reductionism to this author. Public diplomacy of China could only make remarkable achievement by reducing not only the imagined misunderstanding, but also practical one. Public diplomacy of China should also resorts to evidence and reason. The former can help to reduce imagined misunderstanding and the latter can help to reduce practical misunderstanding.

Public diplomacy is an equal and two-way communication.China should present a true China to the world as well as reduce misunderstanding by other countries. Just as the famous theorist J.Jürgen Habermas put it, various cultures should not be confined to the basic values of its own traditions and life styles, respect each other as equal interlocutors and dispel misunderstanding in the harmonious milieu in hope to work together on exploring paramount issues concerning the mankind and the world in the future and explore the way of solution. This should be observed as ethical principle of international communications.①J.Jürgen Habermas and Michael Haller, “The Past as Future: Vergangenheit Als Zukunft: Jurgen Habermas Interviewed by Michael Haller”, Max Pensky.Chinese surely understand its own status, will and policy, hence China should conduct public diplomacy to explain to the foreign publics. But China should not regard itself as arbitrator and be arrogant,otherwise China is not acceptable to others and will not win heart and soul.

Equal and two-way dialogue will improve understanding each other’s cultures and help conduct public diplomacy more pertinent and more effectively. Every single person of every single nation is unique and wonderful. His or her nationality can hardly be generalized in a word. Nevertheless, nationality and cultural identity is good for understanding. People are saying that the Germans are self-confident, ambitious, diligent and disciplinary,the French are romantic and creative, the Indians are pious,self-esteemed and eloquent, and the Japanese are courteous,gregarious and disciplinary. This tells the national identity to some extent. Communication and dialogue should be conducted in a way that various identities are treated pertinently. For examples, American strategists are more concerned with the U.S.global strategy and interest; the European experts underline human rights, cultural values and global governance, while people from developing countries concentrate on national development and the present international environment.Moreover, the forms of dialogues and expressions vary.Americans are candid and realistic. They don’t like red tape and they like to speak out, though they accept outcomes by reasoning.Japanese are more implicit and courteous. They are incredulous.Only by grasping ideas, views and mentality of others, can Chinese public diplomacy proceed more effectively. Equal and two-way communication can also help the Chinese better perceive and understand themselves, which will enable them to improve themselves, promote efficiency and secure a better image. The comparative study of cultures allows Chinese to understand even better of their own culture. For examples, in terms of peace-loving,the Europeans had not come to believe the value of peace and the value of European Union until they had fought wars for hundreds of years, especially the two world wars. The Burmese worship Buddhism, which leads to their belief in peace. The Indians’ idea of peace derives not only from religion, but also from Gandhi’s nonviolent resistance and the peaceful national independence. The Chinese ideas that “harmony is noble” and “pacifism is security”emerged from social, ethical thoughts and boomed along with China’s relations with its neighbors. By talking with foreigners about “peaceful development” and “harmonious world”, China is not only inheriting Chinese cultures, but also drawing upon the foreign cultures in their interpretations of the idea of peace. Hence,we have improved our thoughts and perspectives. Public diplomacy in this way will help mutual learning and integration to create new consensus. Communication and dialogues like this will provide more attraction. More consensuses will consolidate and generate more international cooperation.

Public diplomacy of China does not imply that China is absolutely correct and perfect. On the contrary, it will allow Chinese people to discover their weakness and to assimilate advantages of foreign countries. China’s modernization is in a stage of building an all-round well-off society, meaning that it is only the beginning of the development of economy, society,culture, and politics and so on. The development is unbalanced. It was short since China had become an equal member of the international system and just began to become a regional power in Pacific Asia and a global power. China has to gain experience in protecting national interest, providing public goods, assuming international responsibility and applying international system.China needs to learn from other countries of their experience and lessons. By equal and two-way dialogue, China can listen to foreign criticism and comments, which is good for improving policy performance. Over 60 years’ opening-up, so many foreign experts on Chinese affairs became sincere friends of China. They not only introduce China to the world, but also unreservedly making suggestions and proposals for China. To learn foreign experience earnestly and to improve our performance constantly are the very achievement of public diplomacy in its own part,because public diplomacy resorts not only to words but also to deeds.

Deliberately, artificially and viciously distorting Chinese culture is the worst challenge to the public diplomacy of China.Those that demonize foreign cultures puff and inflate their own cultures. The Arabian American scholar Said wrote that the European “oriental studies” has been uglifying, weakening,barbarizing and alienating the oriental world and they described Islamic countries, Africa, India and Far East as exactly the same.①Edward W. Said, Culture and Imperialism, Vintage, 1994.Western centralism remains so far and is available in its new form these days, which manifests the most prominently in a form of“universal values”. It deems Western values as the sole values of human race, which tries to justify its imposition on the rest of the world. Nonwestern cultures, to them, are not “universal” and are taken for granted backward and inferior. Western countries with its hegemony over lexicon right have the upper hand in mass media and information dissemination that makes part of elites of the developing countries acceptable to the bias. Some in the West goes farther in demonizing China than others to the extent that alleged China can be cooperated in economic field, though out of tune with the West in ideological and cultural values and is even a“threat”. Thus, the media environment and cultural environment of China are extremely harsh, a challenge that the public diplomacy of China must respond to by taking aggressive actions to change the environment. In front of the Western media attacks,China must clarify with facts and contend with reason and law.Their attacks and demonization are not in consistence with facts and can be overcome by clarification of facts. Why should we contend by reason? Because in ideological area we should not substitute intimidation and curse for theoretical and ideological reasoning. Our debate not only direct to media and those people in concern, but also to the misled publics. Only by contention and triumph can we win heart of the people. Trans-cultural transmission in political terms is a persuasive process. The values of one country will be accepted by the publics of other countries if the latter are first of all to be emotionally attracted and reasonably identified. Except a few extreme diehards, even the biased people will more or less modify their minds given evidence and reason.Their change of minds will affect the broader publics. Since the abidance by the rule of law and international law are so popular in the world nowadays, resort to law in fighting against bias is taken for granted in public diplomacy. Lee Kuan Yew had won a libel suit over a Western medium and obliged the latter to apologize and carry Lee’s article of rebut. This is a successful response. It will work better if we take actions ahead of time by judging from clues of evidence. Public diplomacy of China should shift from reactive response to proactive action as an approach.

III. Advancing Public Diplomacy by Discarding Conventional Ideas

In advancing public diplomacy and upgrading soft power of culture, Chinese government and people have to deal with the issues of ideas, mechanisms, talents and budget. This essay focuses on how to get rid of conventional ideas.

The party and state have attached great importance to the ideas of soft power and public diplomacy, though it will take time for cadres and masses to learn and digest. Upgrading of perceptions is no easy thing. It is a revolution to get rid of conventional ideas and a leap forward to build up new ideas. At present, cadres and masses prefer hard power to soft power. The problem is salient since China has yet to further strengthen hard power construction, which is tangible, visible and fruitful and key to evaluation of the performance of the cadres. Despite scientific development as a perception initiated by the CCP and improvements being seen in areas such as social harmony,energy-saving and environment protection, fundamental victory has yet to be won. Not a few cadres believe that economic growth should take a center stage over culture and the rest will come along. The perception becomes obstacle to further development.China’s modernization is entering into a new stage of building an all-round well-off society and Chinese interaction with the world is entering into a new stage as well. Thus, preferential policy and low cost labor no longer work in economic development.Value-added service, friendly environment and politeness loom large in further development. Public diplomacy is one of them.Economic prowess does shoot problems, though it will not translate into soft power immediately. Soft power will boom only by long term cultivation and care. Some in China wonder why the greater progress China has made, the more vehemently the criticism is made by foreign media. Therefore, culture should take the center stage over economic growth instead. Economy is the base. Economic activities take place day in and day out and in a great deal, though their highest standing is to reflect the Chinese advanced culture and values. Only by that could Chinese development model be more persuasive and attractive that allows peace emergence more acceptable to the world.

NGOs are important in promoting public diplomacy and soft power. NGOs must be under the leadership of government,though the latter should give up the concept of omnipotence. A strong government is both advantageous and disadvantageous to public diplomacy. Japanese experts deem actors of public diplomacy as “government and governmental agencies”.①Masashi Kaneko, et al., Public Diplomacy (Chinese version), Foreign Language Education and Research Press, 2009, p.8.The Japanese base ball and cartoon are popular in the world, though the activities of those individuals, enterprises and NGOs are not included in the system of government policy, hence beyond the category of public diplomacy. Government is critical to the leadership, reconciliation and coordination over public diplomacy.However, government not only should oblige officials and diplomats to proceed public diplomacy in foreign countries, but also should consign the public diplomacy to non-governmental forces like enterprises, think tanks, individuals and NGOs. Thus, it is a new issue for government to think over how, whom, what form in which to consign the public diplomacy and to develop the whole network. NGOs thrive in China as Chinese society progresses fast. A few of cadres are extremely wrong to think NGOs as “anti-government organizations” or a disaster. In fact,organizations, such as enterprises, guilds, think tanks, universities,media, etc., except government, are all NGOs. The majority of NGOs support and agree with peaceful development and harmonious world concepts. They are competent for the mission of public diplomacy, though government has yet to lead, to back up and to guide.

Prof. YU Xintian is the Director of academic committee of Shanghai Institutes for International Studies.