Given the amount of hard power China has achieved over the last 40 years, it should have a lot more soft power by now.
Other Asian countries should already be in China’s orbit given its similarities in culture, geographic proximity, and economic interdependence. Yet that hasn’t happened.
In order for China to obtain real soft power other than just economic admiration, it needs to comprehensively surpass the West, especially the US. That’s going to take a long while, if ever.
And if given a choice between well governed Liberal Democracy and Communism one party rule, most people of the world would probably choose the former, including many Chinese people.
There are broadly speaking two distinct types of soft power.
At the one end, you have your soft and cuddly non-threatening oh-isn’t-that-cute/exotic novelty affection like you would have for a pet, which I like to call pitypower; and on the other end you have the kind of awe inspiring real soft power where others look at your society and economy and want to have what you got and/or draw upon its values and wisdom as a model for themselves.
Often people dont ealise the distinction and conflate one with the other.
Things like K-pop and anime are pitypower, because while western audiences may be charmed and amused by it, few would want their own society to be modelled upon that.
Chinese soft power had, for a long time been mistakenly targeting this pitypower level with things like panda diplomacy and Confucius institutes.
But as Chinese hard power has increased dramatically over recent decades, it has found that it is creating its own, true brand soft power without even actively trying.
As hard as it is to see sometimes, all of the western MSM obsession with smearing China is actually a manifestation of Chinese soft power. They would not be bothering if Chinese soft power had no appeal at all.
It is taking all of their collective power and skill to twist and distort what modern China is like to keep their own people from seeing the truth, because they know that truth will have their own peoples asking, why the fuck don’t we have things like that/do things that way at home?
That is the truest form of soft power. The west throwing up a smokescreen to try to hide it doesn’t prevent it from being there. This is the core reason why significant sections of western elites wants a war with China, so they can destroy that soft power reality before they can no longer shield their masses from it.
This true soft power isn’t won through media spin or other flowery bullshit, but through hard power alone.
