Abstract

The concept of soft power has been highly influential in recent years, both as a concept to inform understanding of the cultural dimensions of international relations and as providing a practical guide to state investment in the international expansion of both news and entertainment media. One of the places where it has been most influential has been China, where is has been used to support the international expansion of China Central Television and the growth of Chinese entertainment media conglomerates. It is argued in this article, however, that the concept rests upon a weak understanding of the cultural dimensions of power and upon the transmission model of communication. As a result, there has tended to be a distributional bias in investing in cultural diplomacy and relatively little attention has been given to how audiences actually engage with international media content. Applied to the Chinese case, it is argued that support for entertainment media is more likely to support the aspirations of the Chinese government than news media, although news is likely to be prioritized for political reasons. At a more conceptual level, discussion of national soft power strategies and their relation to global media points to the need for new approaches in global media and communication studies, that could be termed post-globalization, that can address strengths and weaknesses in both critical political economy and media globalization approaches, and recognize the continuing centrality of nation states to the structuring of global media flows across territorial boundaries.

Soft power—proliferating uses and confusing definitions

One of the features of recent debates surrounding soft power and cultural diplomacy is that, as use of the term “soft power” has increased, there has been a blurring of specifics surrounding the definition of the term. The most influential definition of soft power remains that proposed by the Harvard University International Relations Theorist Joseph S Nye, which defined soft power as “the ability to get what you want through attraction rather than coercion or payments” (Nye, 2004, p. x) and the associated “ability to shape the preferences of others” (Nye, 2004, p. 5). In his earliest book addressing the topic, Bound to Lead: The Changing Nature of American Power, published in 1990, Nye sought to distinguish the command power associated with economic and military power from the co-optive or “soft” power of “setting the agenda and determining the framework of a debate” (Nye, 1990, p. 32). Nye (2011, p. 84) has argued that the soft power of a country rests upon three pillars:

۱٫ Culture (in places where it is attractive to others);

۲٫ Political values (when these live up to them at home and abroad);

۳٫ Foreign policies (when others see these as legitimate and having moral authority).