Approaches to soft power and public diplomacy in China and Taiwan

Abstract

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

Communicating India's Soft Power

“…The rise or "return" of Asia to global prominence is to be witnessed in the growing importance given by Asian nations to soft power initiatives (Lee and Melissen, 2011;Rawnsley, 2012). Although economically one of the most powerful countries in the world, Japan, with its imperial history of imposing militaristic culture among Asian nations, treads carefully in promoting its soft power.…”

Public Diplomacy: Functions, Functional Boundaries and Measurement Methods

“…Having clarified the definition of public diplomacy, we need to make clear its functions, as it is only when we know what public diplomacy should and can do that we can determine, according to this criterion, whether or not it is effective. At present, academic discussions on the effect of public diplomacy generally associate it with the concept of 'soft power' as proposed by Nye [8][9][10][11][12], and tend to take the size of a country's soft power as the core measure through which to evaluate the effect of its public diplomacy [13][14][15][16][17]. In order to define more clearly and reasonably the function of public diplomacy, this part will critically refer to Nye's theory when clarifying the relationship between public diplomacy and soft power.…”

Communicating China to the World: Confucius Institutes and China's Strategic Narratives

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