Is religion really a soft power? Remember that power means influence. What nation has gained influence by exporting its religion? Italy? Iran and Saudi Arabia share the same religion, but they hate each other's guts.
Does the Dalai Lama have influence? Or is he only a convenient pawn for already existing anti-Chinese powers?
As for popular rebellions like the "Yellow Turbans", it does not even apply to the topic at hand. We are discussing soft power in the context of international relations, not domestic affairs.
People are learning Chinese voluntarily because of the soft power of the ancient Chinese culture. There are few people learning Chinese because they consider their military hard power. Just as an example.
Islam started out because of the convincing soft power that enabled to convert people voluntarily, Christianity worked along the same lines. Sooner or later, involuntary conversion by the use of hard power started and the Yellow turbans are an example, well known to Chinese, how this mechanism works. For the mechanism it's irrelevant whether it's within a large country or between smaller countries/tribes. China is one country, but it's so large that many groups live within it that do have a lot of differences. During the Yellow turban time China quite correctly realized their position with fuzzy borders and lands with differing degrees of autonomy, that's why China sees themselves as land in the middle. This view has shifted from degree of autonomy to degree of ideological influence, begun during Mao as one of the leaders of the non-aligned movement. It has now shifted to other influences of the Chinese outlook on the world being adopted by other countries. That's Chinese soft power and because China never demanded magnificient tribute, China has always been a country with a very strong soft power in the region and in the world. At the moment, Chinese soft power on the West is in my opinion on a low while Chinese soft power on developing countries is on a high.
The Dalai Lama has charisma = soft power, that's why he is heard by many people. Invitations of the Dalai Lama are a way of sharing in the many sympathies he has. The problem with the profit derived from such invitations is the PRC backlash, so things have to be carefully balanced. If a group wants a confrontation with China, why shouldn't they reap as much soft power benefits as possible by inviting the Dalai Lama as frequent as possible?
Religion is soft power because it forms the way people perceive their world and makes it easier to share information with co-religionists. You have a misconception about it, you don't derive power from shared religion, but knowledge transfer and cooperation. A good example would be the rise of the West while their Muslim neighbours didn't have a chance to keep up. Part of the rise of the West were the religious wars between the Christian confessions during which each confessional group developed for example their own shared military system. The importance of knowledge transfer due to shared religion is why in pre-Communist times conversions of Russia to a different Chrsistian confession was a frequent topic. It was about better partaking in knowledge transfers (due to a shared outlook like the Protestant work ethic
) and thus economic development.
Iran and Saudi-Arabia share a religion, but not the official state religious branch. Iran is Shia
and Saudi-Arabia is Wahhabi Sunni
with a large Shia group living on the land above the oil fields without reaping as much benefits as the Sunni or even Wahhabi. In Islam since earliest times the Shia and the Sunni have waged bloody wars against each other over the succession of the caliph and now about the usual religious nitpicking that is a typical attitude in all Western Eurasian religions and allows them to be even more hostile against differing branches of the same religion than against other religions. Things get more complicated because Saudi-Arabia is not only Sunni with a traditional (means things have changed in recent times)Shia workforce, like the other ruling classes of the Gulf Cooperation, but they are Wahhabi Sunnis. The Wahhabi are very aggressive Sunni religious warriors who want all Musilims to be like them because they consider everything else a gross violation of Islam, as bad as heathens (among whom they include the al Khitab
despite the prophet).
The Wahhabi are at the core of the Salafist problem, because the Wahhabi are a group of Salafists with lots of money that enables them to give expensive mosques to Islamic religious communities that were very liberal in their interpretation. The upkeep of these mosques is expensive and requires more help by the wealthy Wahhabi, who in turn want to have some suitable religious teachers. Furthermore you get money for and advice about being a Salafist Wahhabi. These subsidies (and state-welfare exploitation in Europe) make it unnecessary to work for Salafists because they are very busy studying religious scriptures and enforcing their derived conclusions about behaviour according to their interpretation of the mentioned scriptures on others. The problem is similar, whether you insert Salafists or the Orthodox Jews of Israel. I'm very much in favour of making all these religious hotheads work in order to earn their living because I never had a problem with the few Salafists who did earn their upkeep by working. If you work and do have a strong moral believe you can be quite a benefit for your environment. If you just study and try to enforce your conclusions your a parasite and a nuisance. Thus the current soft power of Saudi Arabia expressed by the rising influence of Wahhabi inspired Salafism, and the terrorism of some members of this group, is based on their hard power of petro-dollars.
