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The concept of ‘soft power’ caught the attention of the Chinese academia in the 1990s with the translation of Joseph Nye’s book Bound to Lead into Mandarin by He Xiaodong (Cho and Jeong 2008). Nye’s argument that “if a state makes its power seem legitimate in the eyes of others, it will encounter less resistance to its wishes” (Nye 1990, 32) stimulated China’s interest and efforts in building soft power. Rebuilding its reputation post-Tiananmen Square incident, China embraced the dominant norms of international order with a vision to create an image of a responsible power. The introduction of strategic narratives of “Peaceful Rise theory” and “Harmonious World” in 2003 and the launch of the Confucius Institute (CI) program in 2004 were landmark efforts in China’s soft power diplomacy (Cho and Jeong 2008). China’s soft power push got further intensified with Xi Jinping’s insistence on “increasing China’s soft power, giving a good Chinese narrative, and better communicate China’s message to the world” (Shaumbagh 2015, 99). The launch of Beijing’s flagship initiative of the Belt and Road in 2013 was a significant step toward institutionalizing China’s soft power presence in the world (Shaumbagh 2015). Not to mention, China invested in a variety of instruments, including new public diplomacy narratives of the ‘Chinese Dream’, ‘the Asia-Pacific dream’, or ‘Community of Common Destiny’; initiatives for building regional financial architecture, such as the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) and New Development Bank (NDB); and a tremendous expansion of Chinese media presence internationally to advance its global image and power (Lams 2018).
Like any other nation, China has been employing all arsenals in its toolkit to meet its foreign policy objectives. However, interestingly, Chinese statecraft is not confined to Joseph Nye’s popular framework of ‘smart power’, an ideal and proportionate mix of hard (coercion) and soft (influence) power to reach desired objectives (Nye 2009). Nye recommended states develop both hard and soft power in tandem to achieve maximum positive outcomes; however, China’s exercise of hard and soft power often competes or contradicts each other. Its power strategy falls short of the principal harmony of Yin and Yang: the union of two opposite yet complementary forces where anyone is not superior to the other, and an increase in one does not bring...