America still retains a soft power advantage over China

In 2007, President Hu Jintao told the 17th Congress of the Chinese Communist Party that China needed to increase its soft power — the ability to influence others by attraction rather than coercion or payment. The Chinese government has spent tens of billions of dollars to that end, but with mixed results.

Some years ago, the Chinese foreign minister invited me to a private dinner to ask my opinion on how China could increase its soft power. I told him that China faced two major obstacles that would be difficult to overcome. First, it faced territorial disputes with a number of its Asian neighbors. Placing a Confucius Institute in New Delhi or Manila to draw attraction to Chinese culture does not work well if Chinese soldiers are killing Indian soldiers on the Himalayan border or Chinese ships are harassing Philippine boats in the South China Sea. 

China’s second problem is its insistence on tight Communist Party control over all organizations and opinions in its civil society. When a brilliant artist like Ai Weiwei is exiled and human rights lawyers are jailed, it reduces the attraction of China in democratic countries like Europe and the United States.

This is unlikely to change under the presidency of Xi Jinping, whom former Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd describes as a “Marxist nationalist.” Xi believes in the “scientific laws of Marxism” and restoring the glory of ancient China. On a visit to Beijing last month, I was told that the government was tightening its control on what citizens could say or do, and that the security bureaucracies were increasing their domination over the economic bureaucracies. 

These problems are confirmed by recent public opinion polls asking citizens of other countries which foreign countries they find attractive. Pew surveyed 24 counties last November and reported that majorities in most countries found the U.S. more attractive than China, with Africa the only continent where the results were close. More recently, Gallup found that the U.S. enjoyed an advantage in 81 out of 133 countries that it surveyed, while China had an advantage in 52. 

Over the years, American soft power has had its ups and downs. The U.S. was unpopular in many countries during the Vietnam and Iraq Wars, and again when President Donald Trump proclaimed his “America First” policy. America’s position was higher under Presidents Barack Obama and Joe Biden. But even during the Vietnam War, when crowds marched through streets around the world to protest American policies, they did not sing the Communist “Internationale,” but Martin Luther King’s “we shall overcome.” An open civil society that allows protest can be a soft power asset.

China sees itself as the leader of the so-called “Global South” of what used to be called “non-aligned” countries. It aims to displace the American order of international alliances and institutions. China uses its United Nations votes, its claims to have a more successful egalitarian development model and a permissive approach to human rights to curry favor. In addition, its Belt and Road development aid program is designed not only to attract other countries, but also to provide hard economic power. China is now the largest trading partner of more countries than America is. Xi proclaims that the East is rising over the West and promises to replace the liberal order created by the U.S. after 1945. 

Chinese (and many Western) analysts believe that China will surpass the U.S. as the world’s largest economy by 2030. With the slowdown in China’s rate of economic growth, some push the date into the later part of the next decade. But China may not own the future. After all, India, which is now more populous than China, is an important rival in the East, and coordinates some policies with the U.S. And in terms of alliances, China, Russia, Iran and North Korea together comprise about a fifth of the world economy, while the U.S., Europe, Japan and other democracies represent more than half. 

That is why soft power is important. While military and economic hard power usually prevail over soft power in the short run, the attractiveness of soft power helps to hold alliances together for the long run. By enhancing alliances, soft power is a force multiplier. A Norwegian scholar once described the Cold War as dividing Europe into an American and a Soviet empire, but the big difference is that the American one was welcomed as “an empire by invitation.”

If the U.S. pays attention to attracting other countries and maintaining its alliances, China will not surpass us in hard or soft power. But if we act in ways that turns our backs on others, all bets are off. 

Joseph S. Nye, Jr. is Distinguished Service Professor Emeritus at Harvard and author of the recent memoir, “A Life in the American Century.”