Xi seeks to repair China’s image at summit with Obama

The massive worldwide attention on the first summit between Chinese President Xi Jinping and U.S. President Barack Obama, on June 7-8 in California, underlines the growing prominence of China in world affairs. While there is an extensive summit agenda, from tackling regional problems in Asia, to alleged Chinese cyberattacks, Xi reportedly has a broader desire to fundamentally redevelop a new type of great power relationship between the two countries.

This is an audacious goal which is lacking, currently, in any obvious definition. What is clear, however, is that Xi’s ambition reflects an assessment that China’s rapidly rising economic and military power needs to be underpinned by better international understanding and appreciation of the country.

Especially since the 2008 global financial crash, there has been a sea change in international expectation that China has or is fast assuming superpower status. This is reflected not just in the views of political elites, but also international public opinion. Between 2009 and 2011 alone, there was a 10 or more percentage point increase in public sentiment, in countries as diverse as Spain, France, Pakistan, Jordan, Israel, Poland and Germany, that China will or already has surpassed the United States as the world's most powerful state, according to Pew Global Attitudes Project.

While foreign acknowledgement of China’s strength is often welcomed in Beijing, this trend is not uniformly positive. For the country’s rising prominence has aroused mixed reactions, internationally, about whether this is an overall positive or negative development.

While polls show that some foreign publics (especially in Muslim-majority states) generally welcome the shifting global balance of power, there is anxiety elsewhere, including in parts of Europe and Asia. Generally, however, international opinion tends to be more favorable toward China’s rise when it is framed in terms of the country’s growing economic power, but less so when seen through the prism of its stronger military prowess.

From Beijing’s vantage point, such foreign concerns reflect misperceptions over its intentions as a rising power. And Xi appears to recognize that this is exacerbated by a broader deficit in China’s global soft power (that is, the ability to persuade other countries and foreign publics through attraction and co-option rather than coercion, use of force, or payment).

To be sure, Beijing has invested many billions of pounds in recent years on foreign charm offensives, and has achieved some significant successes (remember the 2008 Olympics for instance). Nevertheless, the country’s soft power has not increased at the same pace as its hard power (economic and military might).

This is a headache for Beijing as there is, inevitably, some international suspicion, concern, and occasionally outright hostility towards China as a result. In Asia, for instance, countries like Japan are actively strengthening their alliances, especially with the United States, to try to balance the Middle Kingdom.

That China has such a significant soft power deficit is one key reason why Xi is placing emphasis on developing a new type of great power relationship with the United States. In effect, he is seeking to double-down on Beijing’s long-standing pledges of securing a harmonious, peaceful rise to power, and being a responsible stakeholder in the international system.

If China is truly to transform its image, it will need to overcome multiple challenges that have meant Beijing has so far secured relatively limited dividends from its soft power investment. One pivotal problem is that while the country has an attractive culture that has long been admired by foreigners, there is sometimes a yawning gap between that and the Communist regime’s domestic actions.

Thus, one reason why the 2008 Olympics was such a success was the way in which Chinese culture was celebrated. However, much of these soft power dividends were squandered soon afterwards when Beijing clamped down in Tibet and Xianjiang.

A second major challenge is that China’s attempts to boost soft power are too reliant on public sector-driven initiatives. This is in stark contrast to those countries with the best reputations, including the United States, which derive much of their attractiveness with international stakeholders from their rich and vibrant civil-society and private sector.

The mirror image of this issue is that traditionally there has been too little emphasis from Beijing upon public diplomacy programs to reach out to foreign publics directly. Rather than winning hearts and minds in this way, Beijing has tended to place emphasis, especially in Africa and the Middle East, on improving working relationships with strategically important governments through assistance programs that may not always serve the interest of local people.

As these examples show, the challenges are wide-ranging and deep-seated, and will be the work of more than one summit to overcome. Indeed, enhancing China’s reputation is a truly generational task that will require not only sustained investment, but also fundamental change, during Xi’s presidency.

© Japan Today