The Soft Power of Hard States, edited by Michael Barr and Valentina FeklyuninaChina and Russia have devoted significant resources to developing their international broadcasting capacity as an instrument of public diplomacy. Focusing on CCTV-N (China) and RT (Russia), this article discusses the strategies each has developed to communicate with international audiences and further the foreign policy ambitions of policy makers in Beijing and Moscow. It highlights the differences between the two stations ? namely CCTV-N's ambition to rectify perceived distortions in the global flow of news about China, and RT's focus on reporting events in the US. Hence the case studies expose the fine line between propaganda and public diplomacy.authorsversionPeer reviewe

Rawnsley, G. D. (2012). Approaches to soft power and public diplomacy in China and Taiwan. Journal of International Communications, 18 (2), 121-135This paper compares the soft power capital and public diplomacy strategies of Taiwan and the People's Republic of China. The premise is that Taiwan's international status and the absence of formal diplomatic recognition by major powers are a serious constraint on Taiwan's ability engage in meaningful outreach with the global community. The focus of the discussion is a paradox: Taiwan should be more successful at soft power since it is the personification of political values which should make it attractive to the liberal-democratic world; and yet the People's Republic of China ? an authoritarian regime ? is attracting far more attention and seems to possess and exercise far more soft power capital than Taiwan. This suggests that measurements of hard power and the models advanced by traditional approaches to international relations are more convincing ways to understand Taiwan's present predicament and its soft power. However, current strategies ? operationalised by both Taiwan and the PRC ? enjoy limited success for different reasons.Peer reviewe

This paper analyses how Taiwan exercises “soft power” and uses public diplomacy to engage with the international community, and to compensate for the absence of formal diplomatic relations with major powers. The research suggests that Taiwan's strategies of international engagement are constrained by its external and internal political environments. The international system (structure) has locked Taiwan into a set of challenging arrangements over which it has little control or influence, while Taiwan's public diplomacy architecture and the activities organised and undertaken by its government agencies in Taibei and its representatives abroad (agency) reveal, at best, a misunderstanding of how Taiwan's soft power might be exercised more effectively. The strategic thematic choices of legitimacy (invoking Taiwan's international status) versus credibility (which in soft power terms offers the most benefit), and the decision to privilege cultural over political themes in international communications, all have profound effects on the success of Taiwan's soft power.

This article analyses trends in election campaigning in Taiwan with particular reference to the landmark 2000 presidential election, when the Kuomintang's 50-year monopoly on power finally ended. It examines the growing professionalism in election campaigning that stands alongside, and is shaped by, the systemic and institutional features of Taiwan's electoral landscape, such as the path dependency of the parties and the electoral system used. The article challenges us to reconsider the notion of how identity is shaped and communicated; globalisation has given birth to a spurious catch-all notion of ?Americani sation? that is invoked by many modern election observers. It is said to describe a trend towards a global convergence of electoral practices based on the adoption of election campaign techniques developed in the United States. The discourse on Americanisation resonates with the pejorative vocabulary more associated with cultural imperialism, suggesting the displacement of the indigenous by the foreign. The article is a warning against using this discourse too liberally. The flows of influence and information are in fact multi-directional, with the United States absorbing cultural effects as well as supplying them. Newly democratising systems have not undergone a blanket Americanisation because, as the Taiwan example clearly demonstrates, traditional methods of voter mobilisation remain important; the foreign coexists with the indigenous

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