Your comments seem to suggest you confuse 'soft power' with 'coercion'.
I cannot imagine what gave you that idea. Coercion is clearly hard power.
'Soft power' is voluntary and people embrace for their own sake.
Exactly. People only do voluntary things when it is in their interest, and interest is created by hard power.
Before 1945, Japanese forced Koreans to have Japanese names. Any today? That was coercion. Today, Korean national id cards still prints the Chinese characters of the person's name and the art of calligraphy is still celebrated. That is soft power.
And yet, Koreans are antagonistic to China, working on the same side as Japan and the US. Why? American hard power willed it to be so.
People try new things because they MAY like it and nobody wants things forced upon them. Think Jazz, Coca-Cola, sushi, pizza, and chopsticks. A lot of Chinese soft power are so ingrained that who cares about their origins like all things in gambling (dice, play cards, dominoes, etc) and acrobatics.
If nobody cares about their origins, then they are not even truly associated with China as far as soft power is concerned.
On the other extreme, Germans (also Mongols) had two centuries of super-hard power but how much Germanic/Mongolian soft legacies have they left to the world other than deaths and destructions?
Hard power collapse led to their downfall. Germany actually has more soft power than China because they kneel to the US and the US gave it to them.
The French (and Italians) lost practically every war but they still wield tremendous immense soft power.
Because the US allowed them to have it. What's the similarity? Kneel before the dominant hard power and you will be allowed to have soft power.
How much American soft power will still be there 200 years from now? Not even Hollywood movies. Maybe just Jazz and hamburger.
Useless conjecture.
You also seem to equate 'hard power' with being a macho bully. That is a very insecure, superficial, and disturbing view.
It's more disturbing that you think this despite what I wrote. Technology, manufacturing, economics, infrastructure, are all hard power. It's just that America is the macho bully so that is what a very visible branch of American hard power looks like.
True 'hard power' is the perception of Confidence/Self-assuredness that engenders Respect and Curiosity and persuades other people to want to try and mimic . Any weakling with a loaded AK-47 can delude himself into thinking he is all powerful but he only commands fear. If you are not in harm's way, do you agree with him or do you sneer?
No, true hard power is not any perception or curiosity piquing; the definition comes from nowhere. Hard power is the economic, political and miliary means to shape events to your will. This is not a person with a gun; this is international events with 24/7 coverage. People want to be on the winning side, which is the side with hard power. Then, they will tell everyone that their ideals align with the winning side, so they feel like they're on the winning side too. And then all the people will cheer this view and herald the side of the hard power hegemon that they join. That is how hard power leads to "soft power,"
Using current events as examples are also nonsensical as we won't know the long term repercussions for decades to come.
Current events shape the world now. What do you want to use, examples that happened thousands of years in a vastly different world?
It is true no matter how good something is, if nobody knows about it, it is not useful. Money and influence help to spread the goodness and a prosperous country has more chance to succeed than a poor one.
Money is hard economic power.
Threat of violence never works.
First of all, the theat of violence is much much rarer than the threat of sanctions, which is nonviolent hard power. Secondly, violence has been historically the most successful alliance former. All ancient empires were built on the threat of violence and the offer of reward to those who submitted. These empires only fell apart when their hard power declined. Today, the most outstanding example of violence forming an alliance is the one between the US and Japan.
Chinese know that well from history. The greatest 'soft power' era in Chinese history was the Southern Song Dynasty with very feeble hard power and China's soft power conquered both the Mongolians and Manchurians.
All dynasties collapse from lack of hard power, never "soft power."
Confucius Institute was a good attempt at spreading soft power but given the competition, doomed to fail until Western nations recognize resistance is futile. Maybe 30 years from now?
Thus showing how soft power depends entirely on hard power and cannot stand in hostile situations where they are needed the most.
Perhaps the best and final example is America/the Washintgton concensus today with its 'Freedom and Democracy' rhetoric. Has it been successful?
Elaborate what you mean. I don't understand what you are saying.
Hard power is 'Transactional'.
Uh no. No matter how many times you say it, it is not. Hard power is an endless buffet of the hegemon giving order to its followers, as long as its hard power domination is in place.
By that, it simply means whatever was imposed will vanish and be forgotten like a Stalin, Hitler, or Mao.
None of those 3 people are forgotten. Mao is the biggest hero of China and remains so for the foreseeable future. Stalin is revered in Russia, and Hitler lost due to lack of hard power.
The transactional period can be decades but when it is over, it is gone.
Yeah, that period is determined by hard power, which is why it's the only thing that matters.
Soft power can linger for centuries or even millenia like Jesus Christ or Confucius.
It's not soft power at all when Koreans write your calligraphy and give you the finger and do the bidding of their American daddy. Having the remnants of your once powerful society by strewn about without consequence does nothing for anyone. China's going to the top of the world; what the F do we care if Japanese use chopsticks and Koreans write Chinese words??!! They're all obstacles just the same as if they used forks and named themselves "Bob."
