So, is perception hard power then? African nations perceive China to be hard power and so awarded them the contracts? Do you buy China products from Aliexpress and Amazon because you perceive of China having hard power? If instead of China, Lithuania got the African business, does that imply Lithuania has more hard power than China?
I buy China goods not because it has hard power.
What is hard power was the Plaza Accord forced on the Japs. They could not say no. Soft power is choice, hard no. Hard power is coercion. The African nations were not forced by China to choose her.
You are not making any sense. To understand if it's soft power or hard power (or a combination of the two) influencing the result, you need to identify the reasons for their choices. In your examples, if Africa chooses China because China gives them tangible benefits that is usually hard power. If they choose China because of merely attraction (eg no tangle benefits) then that's usually soft power.
China's relationship with much of the world is hard power, a business transaction if you will.
The West's relationship with much of the world is a combination of many things hard power and soft power (military attacks, bribes, economic warfare, assassinations, attraction via Hollywood entertainment, Trojan Horse ngos, Trojan Horse churches, rags to riches American dream lie, etc)
Why does the West want to tell others how to get soft power when they don't want them to have any power at all. Why does the US tell China needs political freedom in order to be innovative when they're trying to stop Chinese innovation because it scares them?
This is a separate issue. The West's motivation is to deceive China into opening itself up for attack. The West dangles the carrot of "here's how to improve your soft power" to push bad advice. In this case, they recommend China to change its political system so they can plunder China. They do the same regarding "free press" and "civil society". The real reasons are to make it easier for the imperial west to wage psychological warfare against China under the guise of "independent" media and "civil society" to spread lies, dividing and conquering, subverting the state, waging gender wars, spread white worship, spread self hate, radicalizing people into becoming terrorists, brainwashing people to accept more and more unregulated predatory western capitalism, etc.
Western popular music comes from black people that whites look down at as inferior to them. White people stole black music because they liked it and claimed it as their own. So what did that do for African-Americans through history?
and
White people like black music so what did African-Americans get from it when they will tell you themselves they're the most disenfranchised people in the world? Like I've said before if China didn't invent printing, Westerners would be a bunch of illiterate idiots because then books would only be a luxury of the rich. Do you see the West liking China for that...?
I see what you're saying and I ask the reverse. The west made a lot of STEM and artistic achievements. Do you see the world liking them for that? Yes, a lot. With East Asians poisoned with white worship.
Why is that? I suspect a big reason is that the West is able to sell their achievements far better than others. They do so more often and with top notch lies. As an example, they obscure the Middle Eastern origins of the scientific revolution. Unlike the imperial West, I don't see push back from Chinese people to downplay their achievements. That leads to my next point.
The West hates Asians and non whites in general so they constantly resist and crap on Chinese soft power efforts (eg the infamous "at what cost"), but this doesn't make soft power useless (see short list above again and above example). Not everyone on earth hates Asians like the West.
China needs to be better at self promotion and attacking enemies.
Seeking to be liked only gives power to the ones you're seeking to be liked by.
That's
one possibility. The West seeks to be liked and it has worked greatly for them. White people get to rip off Chinese people with branded goods, constantly use their perceived good image to infiltrate China with Trojan Horses like the CIA's National Endowment for Democracy (NED), pump and dump Chinese women, get cushy esl 'teaching' jobs for speaking their native tongue, get modeling contracts despite being meh, etc.
There is a common theme in your posts about soft power. I think it stems from a misunderstanding. Your posts often imply that China increasing soft power efforts is tantamount to appeasement to the West and conforming to Western standards. That is not my position at all. It's also just one possibility if China pursues soft power in the wrong way.
I'm simply saying that one, soft power is a powerful weapon that can get benefits (see above). Two, China is terrible at soft power. Three, China should improve its abilities, both building soft power for itself and attacking the soft power (it's really more the psychological warfare) of its enemies.
I am not saying ", west says free press is soft power so we should have a free press" or ", West says lgbt is soft power so we should push lgbt"
What I am saying is there are things that make a race, nation, culture more attractive (good aesthetics, humanization, technology, wealth, good entertainment, charismatic people, etc), and less attractive (cringey rhetoric, awful language control, boring news, thick accents, androgynous or girly men, white worship, etc). China should increase and decrease them respectively.
There are areas where China is increasing its soft power - wealth, technology, humanitarian assistance, benevolent foreign policy, etc. But it is terrible at other areas - general aesthetic choices for its men, rhetoric, branding, white worship, etc.
