Soft Power Narrative in Contemporary China: Official Discourse and the Media

In recent years, the topic of China’s soft power has been widely debated by both Chinese and foreign observers. In the People’s Republic of China (PRC) the discussion started in the early 1990s when the theory, originally put forward by the American scholar Joseph S. Nye, Jr., made its first appearance in intellectual circles and gradually penetrated the policy-making and leadership levels. In 2007, reference to China’s soft power in the report to the 17th National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) marked the theory’s official inclusion within the country’s national strategy, formally incorporating the wording wenhua ruan shili 文化软实 力 (cultural soft power) into the PRC’s political and media jargon. The chapter, which is based on the doctoral thesis “From Soft Power to ‘wenhua ruan shili’: Theory and Practice in the Chinese Discourse on Soft Power” discussed by the author in March 2016 at the University of Cagliari (Italy), focuses on three areas of analysis: the main features of China’s soft power strategy in terms of its fundamental elements, connotations, and narrative but also purposes and targets; the Chinese official discourse on soft power in terms of the leadership’s commitment to actively promoting a national discussion on identity and culture-building, while at the same time implementing a practice that requires a collective effort involving society as a whole; the participation of state media outlets in popularizing the mainstream narrative on cultural soft power, embodying its contents and projecting its force at home and abroad.