Soft Power, Hard Choices

摘要

Ask a party bureaucrat in Beijing about China's foreign ambitions these days, and the reply may sound like a beauty contestant's doe-eyed promise to work for world harmony. "Peaceful resolution of global problems is both our aim and our style," asserts one official involved in international affairs. China has no interest in becoming a military superpower, he insists. "A power, yes, but not a superpower," he says. "We don't want to be enemies with anyone." Don't laugh. One of the hottest topics among foreign-policy specialists is China's rapidly growing "soft power." The term, coined 15 years ago by Harvard political scientist Joseph S. Nye Jr., refers to influence arising from attraction and persuasion rather than threats and force. Nye was talking about the global reach of American arts and ideas—and about the danger of overplaying U.S. weaponry while neglecting the country's cultural and intellectual clout. Back then, Beijing had scant international leverage aside from its nuclear arsenal and its huge but threadbare Army. Today China is an economic giant, reshaping the landscape of world trade. In February the Washington-based Earth Policy Institute announced that China has surpassed the United States as the world's biggest consumer of meat, grain, coal and steel.