The chinese vision of soft power. General considerations

Abstract

In the last half of the century, public diplomacy has gained great popularity worldwide, becoming one of the basic components of diplomatic practices. From this perspective, it is important to study how the concept of soft power is currently perceived and understood in China at the national level as well as by civil society and the target of China’s public diplomacy. Various Chinese scholars from major Chinese universities concerned with the issue of soft power have published numerous articles systematically describing China’s perspective on the concept and where their country stands at the beginning of the 2000s, with the intention of defining the concept and charting a trajectory for their country. Looking at the Chinese sources and comparing them with the general notions of soft power presented by Joseph Nye, we can state that we are witnessing a new process of assimilation and adaptation in China of a theorythat does not originate in Asia. This article aims to illustrate how China defines soft power and how it has implemented this new tool of the new diplomacy by analyzing the specialized materials published in China during the period 2005-2017.