Professor Joseph Nye and others developed the terms “soft power”, “sharp power” and “hard power” some time ago. They persuasively argued that leading nations used these powers to advance their own national interests. Sharp power included acutely coercive persuasion, while hard power was centrally concerned with military enforcement activities, or what used to be called “gunboat diplomacy”.

Nye wrote, in 1990, that, “When one country gets other countries to want what it wants, (this) might be called co-optive or soft power in contrast with the hard or command power of ordering others to do what it wants.”

When I wrote on soft power about a year ago, I argued that the United States was the long-term exemplar of how to develop and wield that power effectively. This continues to be the case. The US enjoys a huge soft-power advantage as it dominates the extremely influential, mainstream Western media sphere — including Hollywood. Once upon a time, US soft power may have comprised 70 percent substance and 30 percent marketing. Today, those figures are surely reversed, which means the globe-spanning role of those Western media outlets is even more important.

In 2023, a member of the US Congress, Raja Krishnamoorthi, writing in the leading journal Foreign Policy, argued that “the US cannot afford to lose a soft power race with China”. Clearly, something was happening. Thirty years earlier, no one in the US would have been remotely concerned about China in this way.

About a year later, an article in another leading US journal, Foreign Affairs — written by Daniel Mattingly of Yale University — appeared, titled: China’s Soft Sell of Autocracy is Working.

Professor Mattingly’s report draws, in part, on an international survey of people in 19 countries around the world, which found that Beijing’s messaging was “particularly resonant in developing countries, such as Colombia, Kenya, Mexico, Nigeria and South Africa”. The article is distinctly helpful in the way it maps the impact of China’s expanding English-language, global-media footprint, including the China Global Television Network (CGTN):

“We found (during the survey) that viewers’ positions on China moved dramatically after watching representative clips produced by CGTN. Although only 16 percent of people preferred the Chinese political model to the US political model initially; after watching CGTN content, 54 percent stated the reverse. People also saw the Chinese system as more responsive, better at delivering growth, and, remarkably, more democratic in character.”

Anyone who takes the time to watch what CGTN offers today in English will not be surprised by the survey outcomes: The best programs are excellent, and production quality is regularly first-rate. Moreover, with 1.4 billion people, a continuous culture that is several thousand years old, civil engineering on a scale seen nowhere else, and a remarkably diverse, haunting geography, there are countless engrossing stories waiting to be told.

The steady rise of China’s global soft power is being energized by various factors. The extraordinary Belt and Road Initiative is over 10 years old. Given its exceptional scale, it has not all been plain sailing. But its positive achievements far outweigh any setbacks. Across the Global South, new hospitals, bridges, roads, railways and schools are marvelous to behold. The American and European, BRI-imitator programs radiate many promises, but they are not remotely comparable in terms of performance. Leading Singaporean commentator Kishore Mahbubani observed about a year ago that:

“The BRI is bringing real benefits to the Global South. It is striking that the fast train between Jakarta and Bandung (with speeds of up to 350 kilometers per hour) was launched in the very week that Britain (a member of the G7) announced it did not have funds to proceed with the fast train between Birmingham and Manchester. Future historians will mark this as a clear indicator of how times have changed in our world.”

The steady rise of China’s global soft power is being energized by various factors. The extraordinary Belt and Road Initiative is over 10 years old. Given its exceptional scale, it has not all been plain sailing. But its positive achievements far outweigh any setbacks

Furthermore, unlike America’s large hospital ships with no permanent medical staff, which rarely leave port today, China’s fully staffed “Peace Ark” hospital ship makes offshore visits year in and year out. China is also enjoying a significant lift in entertainment soft power with the recent, eye-catching worldwide success of the Black Myth: Wukong video game.

Another easily overlooked, undergirding, soft-power factor is the multigeneration establishment of the remarkable Chinese global diaspora totaling around 50 million. Much is made of the global soft-power influence of American fast-food chains. However, the organic spread of Chinese restaurants worldwide is far older and far more dispersed. The last time I checked, there were three established Chinese restaurants in Ushuaia, in Tierra del Fuego at the southern tip of South America — but no McDonald’s outlet.

Unsurprisingly, Mattingly’s recent article compares the US and China. Both are described as “selling” and “messaging” — though only China is explicitly identified as producing “propaganda”. But China’s unique nation-building achievements are also aptly woven into the narrative.

Here, though, is what comes sharply into focus as you read this article: China’s soft power today relies fundamentally on an unmatchable performance scorecard built up over the past 40 years, which is being impressively added to each year. There is so much for the marketing aspect to work with.

This message is implicit in Mattingly’s thoughtful commentary. It also explains one key reason why the US faces such headwinds today as it works “to sell its political system to the global public”. And this is before we begin examining the incineration of America’s global reputation arising from its horrific complicity in Israel’s unpardonable, genocidal attack on Gaza, which the depraved leadership in that country wants to expand with resolute US backing across the Middle East.

The author is an adjunct professor in the Faculty of Law at the University of Hong Kong.

The views do not necessarily reflect those of China Daily.