Chinese Economics Thread

H

HereToSeePics

Junior Member
Staff member
Moderator - World Affairs
Registered Member
Overbom said:
You fell into the trap of believing that soft "power" actually matters materially for China at this stage.

What matters now is hard power. And since hard power is a zero-sum game, we got to wait until China beats US or become extremely strong to withstand Western pressure, before soft power really starts working.

In any case, soft power propaganda cannot fool a country's elites when the hard power is not strong enough
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No, both is important. Countless examples where China's growth and development was setback or impeded because their lack of soft power in certain areas that let the US sell a convincing China = bad narrative. Lets see here:

BRI projects put on hold or scaled back due to China not being able to counter the "debt trap" narrative.​
​
Huawei and ZTE"s international expansion plans and growth in new markets made harder due to "spying" claims that China couldn't effectively counter.​
​
Strikes and riots in Chinese owned mines in Africa due to false narratives that Chinese owners are exploiting and abusing workers.​
​
Uyghur genocide and slave labor accusations leading to various Xinjiang industries being set back due to product bans impacting global sales of Chinese and international companies using Xinjiang cotton.​

Softpower is efficient and effective because we're seeing it effectively being used against China in just those above examples alone. Each of those have a material yuan cost against China or Chinese companies.
 
Z

zgx09t

Junior Member
Registered Member
nixdorf said:
Soft power does matter if you understand how things work, in particular in Western democracies. The government is able to do what it does by first controlling public opinion. If public opinion is against a country, then it's easy to go to war against it, put sanctions on it, and so on. If public opinion is against a country, then any politician who voices support for it would be voted out of office, any cooperation would be politically toxic. This is why the US is investing so heavily in media against China throughout the world. Even obscure websites in certain surrounding countries are funded by agencies of the US government and all their articles cast everything that China does in a bad light. This makes it very difficult politically for the local government to cooperate or expand cooperation with China.
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Negative campaigns are more of a political attack nature, rather than promoting the positives about oneself so that one can influence over others to gain their voluntary cooperation, ie, soft power. What you described is more like information warfare, the nasty stuff that usually precedes mass graves and gas chambers.

In warfare, there is something called economy of efforts, which require precision and accuracy, exactly the two qualities that the nebulous definition of soft power cannot provide. What are you specifically promote positively in a very short period of time, over who, and how, how much it costs and who'll foot the bills, etc. while the west have been gradually expending the efforts over many decades in many different ways and channels. China could get more bangs for bucks making negative campaigns and that's exactly what has been done mostly over the social media and other venues if you are paying attention.
 
R

Red Moon

Junior Member
jalls said:
It seems that countries with friendly political and economic ties to China, the good relations is more or less limited to the political level.
Simple example is street interviews of everyday Russians who say they recognize China as an important business partner but it's limited to that, namely not a cultural partner. Some even say they think Russia is selling out the country to China, a view that's more common in African countries that are unhappy about jobs during infra projects going to temporary Chinese workers.

This is perhaps the issue of soft power. The average Russian is more likely to have a view that they're Europeans who only deal with Chinese as customers or suppliers.

It's also probably the biggest disparity with the US, which is great at it. Much of this is just the way it is; white people will always look toward other whites and most of the smaller white countries speak English near-natively. Due to past colonialism, most places are culturally closer to the Anglosphere. English will be the 2nd language and along with it music and movie consumption. China's efforts with the Confucian institutes seem to have only garnered negative publicity.

One thing I remember being surprised by was Argentinians protesting the '08 Olympic torch run due to US propaganda about Tibet. A few years later, my random English-speaking tour guide in Brazil, perfectly friendly and normal in person, posts concerns about Xinjiang on social media. I had no idea South Americans held such views but if English is their 2nd language, exposure to such news is inevitable.

Do you think soft power is a lost cause generally?

What would be practical soft power goals for China?
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First post off-topic?? Are you familiar with "the average Russian"? You know which views are common, or not, among people in African countries? All 42 of them? And you imagine Latin American countries do not have "globalist" oriented political groupings?

Please take this elsewhere. I don't think people should discuss with you, but if they choose to, please not on this thread.
 
Z

zgx09t

Junior Member
Registered Member
HereToSeePics said:
No, both is important. Countless examples where China's growth and development was setback or impeded because their lack of soft power in certain areas that let the US sell a convincing China = bad narrative. Lets see here:
BRI projects put on hold or scaled back due to China not being able to counter the "debt trap" narrative.​
​
Huawei and ZTE"s international expansion plans and growth in new markets made harder due to "spying" claims that China couldn't effectively counter.​
​
Strikes and riots in Chinese owned mines in Africa due to false narratives that Chinese owners are exploiting and abusing workers.​
​
Uyghur genocide and slave labor accusations leading to various Xinjiang industries being set back due to product bans impacting global sales of Chinese and international companies using Xinjiang cotton.​
Softpower is efficient and effective because we're seeing it effectively being used against China in just those above examples alone. Each of those have a material yuan cost against China or Chinese companies.
Click to expand...

I believe what you have described here are not soft power per se, but something entirely different in nature, but that's my opinion only though, which is not necessarily more valid or better than yours, mind you.
 
J

jalls

Just Hatched
Registered Member
nixdorf said:
One thing is that they don't seem interested in internatinoal tourism. It's not a simple process to visit there, unlike most countries. You have to apply for a visa and you have to get in from the embassy or consulate near your home. So if you happen to be visiting Thailand or something and think, oh wouldn't it be nice to hop on a train... well that's not going to happen.

Other countries like Japan and South Korea for years promoted their country via advertising campaigns with commercials that showed their country in a good light: the natural beauty, the culture and historical sites. But the only image Americans have of China, besides the Great Wall, is a dystopian landscape of smokestacks and factories. Other Americans (or global citizens in general), think only of endless bicycles and the Tiananmen Square "incident".
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Interesting observation. "Dystopian smoke stacks /factories" was mentioned frequently in the US during the recent Olympics and Eileen Gu's events at Big Air Shougang with the former factories in the backdrop that looked like nuclear reactors. I remember seeing a website with free visa processing but I think it represented 1 of the provinces or megacities and might've even been an NGO. Meanwhile, I do see Korean/Japanese gov't advertising to mainstream outlets.

I do remember seeing ads for biz/tech parks at conferences or industry literature in the US but for tourism, my guess is it's partly due to the experience not being up to par yet. In one of my visits to Beijing several years ago, a tourist spot was so crowded that it became a singular mass nudging and pushing its way through a courtyard. An American couple sat next to me on a train and said that they had a tour bus driver try to coerce them into buying souvenirs and that they instead walked away to take a taxi back to their hotel. A lot more such stories but you get the idea.

Chinese people I've spoken to when they visit the west, OTOH, are unabashedly critical of the areas they now see lacking back home. As the story goes about the frog inside a well, a lot of the improvements require Chinese tourists seeing more of the world to see what they want to adopt.

nixdorf said:
Soft power does matter if you understand how things work, in particular in Western democracies. The government is able to do what it does by first controlling public opinion. If public opinion is against a country, then it's easy to go to war against it, put sanctions on it, and so on. If public opinion is against a country, then any politician who voices support for it would be voted out of office, any cooperation would be politically toxic. This is why the US is investing so heavily in media against China throughout the world. Even obscure websites in certain surrounding countries are funded by agencies of the US government and all their articles cast everything that China does in a bad light. This makes it very difficult politically for the local government to cooperate or expand cooperation with China.
Click to expand...

Here's where the cultural ties are used for soft power; when Hollywood celebrities get involved in political commentary (or even incorporate it in movies such as 7 Years in Tibet), their reach is near-global. Daryl Morey (ex-Houston Rockets GM)'s tweet in support of HK protesters caused a storm that showed the growing hard power of withholding the Chinese market in creating some division in the NBA with Lebron/Harden speaking up against Morey. In that instance, I think there was a lack of consideration for soft power. Instead of asking Harden to apologize for Morey, for example, they might've tried to open up the debate about the protests and how the protesters weren't deserving of international support. The apology was widely seen as an insincere deference to sponsorship dollars.

So a typical citizen in country X is very likely to be familiar with major Hollywood movies, watches the NBA, and buys Nike/Adidas/Puma (with their Xinjiang cotton statements) and frequently sees damning news from both news and their cultural influencers. I'm no strategist on these matters but I wonder if there've been attempts to engage the non-gov't parties to not have them see a purely 1-sided view of topics they comment on.
 
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