Joseph Nye gives the keynote address at the launch of Macquarie University’s Soft Power and Advocacy Research Centre (SPARC) where the research focus will be the function of the media in South Asia and China.
Source: youtube.com
China's Soft Power Deficit
I was recently invited to lecture at several Chinese universities about “soft power”—the ability to get what one wants by attraction and persuasion rather than coercion or payment. Since the 1990s, thousands of essays and articles have been published in China on the topic, and the lectures drew large crowds.
(Wall Street Journal, May 8, 2012)
Source: The Wall Street Journal
An interview with Knoowii TV about the use of hard power, soft power and smart power in international relations.
(Knoowii TV, February 29, 2012)
Source: youtube.com
Why China Is Weak on Soft Power
China’s president, Hu Jintao, greeted 2012 with an important essay warning that China was being battered by Western culture: “We must clearly see that international hostile forces are intensifying the strategic plot of Westernizing and dividing China, and ideological and cultural fields are the focal areas of their long-term infiltration,” he wrote, adding that “the international culture of the West is strong while we are weak.”
(International Herald Tribune, January 17, 2012)
Source: The New York Times
Highlights from a lecture delivered to the British Council at Portcullis House, London, on soft power and its importance for today’s governments and global societies.
Source: youtube.com
Power Shifts
As Americans wrestle with the implications of revolutions in the Middle East as well as the rise of China in Asia, we need a better understanding of what it means to have power in world politics. Traditionally, the mark of a great power was its ability to prevail in war. But in an information age, success depends not just on whose army wins but also on whose story wins.
(TIME, May 9, 2011)
Source: TIME
Pulling down the bin Laden myth–-and brand
Killing bin Laden does not end terrorism. In the short run, it may even lead to a spurt of decentralized revenge attacks, but in the longer term it deals Al Qaeda a severe blow. Over the past decade, Al Qaeda became a loose network, almost a franchise, where much of the activity was developed by local terrorist entrepreneurs. Now the value of the brand name is diminished, and that makes the franchise less valuable.
(Christian Science Monitor, May 3, 2011)
Source: csmonitor.com
China's Repression Undoes Its Charm Offensive
I was asked to lecture at Beijing University on soft power, the ability to use attraction and persuasion to get what you want without force or payment. This was before the series of revolutions roiling the Middle East, in whose aftermath China is clamping down on the Internet and jailing human rights lawyers, once again torpedoing its soft power campaign. The auditorium that day was packed, and I had been told that more than a thousand articles have been published in China on this topic. That may have something to do with the fact that in 2007, President Hu Jintao told the 17th Congress of the Communist Party that China needed to increase its soft power.
(Washington Post, March 25, 2011)
Source: Washington Post
In an Information Age, Soft Power Wins
Egypt’s revolution is momentous. In 18 days, a broad-based, nonviolent social movement overcame an entrenched, autocratic government. However, we are still in the first act of a long play.
(CNN, February 14, 2011)
Source: CNN
