Daily Times

The entire world is bewildered and gravelled over growing China’s rise within the time span of one generation. China is widely praised for her projection of soft power and adopting carrot over the stick policy in dealing with affairs around the globe. All international relations and foreign affairs experts agree upon a single-point agenda that modern, unpredictable and globalised world is changing its dynamic fastly and vehemently; rejecting the notions of coercion, hale and squeeze.

Instead, the most desirable and workable ideal is soft power projection along with rebooting multilateral relations in the comity of nations. Hence, China is an expert in jutting and sticking out her soft and professional heart before other countries in the best diplomatic manner. Soft diplomacy has remained a jewel in the crowns of China’s foreign policy objectives, which borne China with the world’s power recognition as it emerged as an economic giant.

There is no conflicting the view that a country follows two types of power: soft power and hard power. Their combination yields “comprehensive national power.”

Soft power refers to religion, culture, costumes, foreign policy and political system. However, the dimensions of hard power are conventional, economic and thermonuclear military. Thus, a superpower manifests both realms of power at the same time.

China’s rise can be gauged regarding her avoidance to wars and hostilities and instead focusing on making affordable but high-quality products as well as efficient and low-cost infrastructure in every nook and corner of the world. The way China is building her civil infrastructure–airports, developed cities, electricity projects, high-speed rails and highways–has grabbed the global attention. Facing no impact of the 2008 financial meltdown, China’s sustainable political growth and hike in development projects have made the world curious about “Chinese Model for development.”

Moreover, the non-interferences principle of China in the domestic affairs of the other countries clinched world leaders to develop professional and bilateral relations with the former. As a comparison to the US, who prefers to wage wars and adopt coercion to follow her national interest, China pursues her foreign policy objectives through economic relations, strategic pacts and people-to-people interactions.

China has altered the decades-long monopoly of Britain in holding the traditional hub for educational activities

In a very short period of time, China has attained the status of an economic giant, emerging military power and a diplomatic manoeuvre. The best illustration of this is China’s belt and road initiative (BRI), which has a deep imprint on the global economy and diplomacy. The corridor and infrastructure under the BRI are extremely favourable for China, which would make it near to the bear US economy and increase former’s clout over world politics.

Therefore, China’s unparalleled and phenomenal progress in every sphere of her national life, be it economic, military, political or diplomatic, rings alarm bells for the status quo. This unprecedented progress has reminded the West of Francis Fukuyama’s stances in his article “The End Of History,” published in 2015. He was of the view that no power other than China could harm the existing state of affairs in which the liberal world is the popular ideology and ruling the roost. Thus, the west has girded up to its loins to impede China’s entry in the global power structure.

The anatomy of China’s foreign policy objectives suggests that it has least or no interest to become a partner in the war or indulge herself in destructive wars. She wants to pursue economic strength, cordial relationships and peaceful atmosphere at her borders for long-term prosperity, development and progression. Due to this factor, China has invested in soft power due to which its interactions with the outside world have grown multifold. The Global Times and the China Global TV Network (CGTN) are forums to narrate the story of the entire world, but with a Chinese perspective.

Not only this, Confucius centres are yet another soft weapon to project China’s culture and tradition. Along with this, the spread of Chinese language in developing countries is another sign of its growing soft power. China has become one of the world’s biggest countries to invite students on scholarships. Moreover, China has a greater opportunity to project her image through the youth-an important asset of any country. The ever-increasing number of international students from neighbouring and developing world has enrolled in engineering and medical universities and colleges of China. It has the status of the second-largest country to host international students after the US. China has altered the decades-long monopoly of Britain in holding the traditional hub for educational activities. China is becoming a country known for its educational superiority as well. Thus, students are the main actors to spread the soft image of a country in an expedited manner. All these aspects of Chinese soft power calculus would lead her to reach the acme and pinnacle of success and prosperity.

The writer is a columnist, historian and an international political and security analyst. He can be reached at asadhussainma@yahoo.com