The concept of soft power has been highly influential in recent years, both as a concept to inform understanding of the cultural dimensions of international relations and as providing a practical guide to state investment in the international expansion of both news and entertainment media. One of the places where it has been most influential has been China, where is has been used to support the international expansion of China Central Television and the growth of Chinese entertainment media conglomerates. It is argued in this article, however, that the concept rests upon a weak understanding of the cultural dimensions of power and upon the transmission model of communication. As a result, there has tended to be a distributional bias in investing in cultural diplomacy and relatively little attention has been given to how audiences actually engage with international media content. Applied to the Chinese case, it is argued that support for entertainment media is more likely to support the aspirations of the Chinese government than news media, although news is likely to be prioritized for political reasons. At a more conceptual level, discussion of national soft power strategies and their relation to global media points to the need for new approaches in global media and communication studies, that could be termed post-globalization, that can address strengths and weaknesses in both critical political economy and media globalization approaches, and recognize the continuing centrality of nation states to the structuring of global media flows across territorial boundaries.
AngI.IsarY. R.MarP. (2015). Cultural diplomacy: Beyond the national interest?International Journal of Cultural Policy, 21, 365–381.
2.
AppaduraiA. (1990). Disjuncture and difference in the global cultural economy. Theory, Culture & Society, 7, 295–310.
3.
BeckU. (2005). Power in the global age: A new global political economy. Malden, MA: Polity Press.
4.
BennettT. (1998). Culture: A reformer’s science. Sydney, New South Wales, Australia: Allen & Unwin.
5.
Boyd-BarrettO. (2014). Media imperialism. London, England: SAGE.
6.
CastellsM. (2009). Communication power. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.
7.
ChuaB. H. (2012). Structure, audience and soft power in East Asian pop culture. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press.
8.
ClarkeD. (2014). Theorizing the role of cultural products in cultural diplomacy from a cultural studies perspective. International Journal of Cultural Policy, 22, 147–163.
9.
CullN. J. (2008). Public diplomacy: Taxonomies and histories. The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 616, 31–54.
FlewT. (2012). The creative industries, culture and policy. London, England: SAGE.
12.
FlewT.HartigF. (2014). Confucius institutes and the network communication approach to public diplomacy. IAFOR Journal of Asian Studies, 1, 27–44.
13.
FlewT.IosifidisP.SteemersJ. (2016). Global media and national policies: The return of the state. In FlewT.IosifidisP.SteemersJ. (Eds.), Global media and national policies: The return of the state (pp. 1–15). Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan.
14.
GibsonM. (2007). Culture and power: A history of cultural studies. Sydney, Australia: University of New South Wales Press.
15.
GlaserB. S.MurphyM. A. (2009). Soft power with Chinese characteristics: The ongoing debate. Washington, DC: Center for Strategic and International Studies.
GorfinkelL.JoffeS.van StadenC.WuY.-S. (2014). CCTV’s global outreach: Examining the audiences of China’s “new voice” on Africa. Media International Australia, 151, 81–88.
18.
HardyJ. (2015). Critical political economy of the media. London, England: Routledge.
19.
HartigF. (2015). Chinese public diplomacy: The rise of the Confucius Institute. London, England: Routledge.
20.
HoV.FungA. (2016). Cultural policy, Chinese national identity and globalization. In FlewT.IosifidisP.SteemersJ. (Eds.), Global media and national policies: The return of the state (pp. 122–138). Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan.
HongK. (2014). Nation branding of Korea. In LeeH.-K.LimL. (Eds.), Cultural policies in East Asia: Dynamics between the state, arts and creative industries (pp. 69–84). Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan.
23.
HowardP. (2011). Castells and the media. Cambridge, UK: Polity Press.
HuangL. (2012). Can Beijing become a global media capital? In FlewT. (Ed.), Creative industries and urban development: Creative cities in the 21st century (pp. 56–67). London, England: Routledge.
26.
IwabuchiK. (2002). Recentering globalization: Popular culture and Japanese transnationalism. Durham, NC: Duke University Press Books.
27.
IwabuchiK. (2015). Pop-culture diplomacy in Japan: Soft power, nation branding and the question of “international cultural exchange.”International Journal of Cultural Policy, 21, 419–432.
28.
KawashimaN. (2014). The film industry in Japan—Prospering without active support from the state? In LeeH.-K.LimL. (Eds.), Cultural policies in East Asia: Dynamics between the state, arts and creative industries (pp. 210–226). Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan.
29.
KeaneM.ZhaoE. J. (2014). The reform of the cultural system: Culture, creativity and innovation in China. In LeeH.-K.LimL. (Eds.), Cultural policies in East Asia: Dynamics between the state, arts, and creative industries (pp. 155–173). Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan.
30.
KennedyP. M. (1990). The rise and fall of the great powers: Economic change and military conflict from 1500 to 2000. New York, NY: Knopf Doubleday.
31.
KobayashiM. (2014). The paradigm shift in local cultural policy in Japan. In LeeH.-K.LimL. (Eds.), Cultural policy in East Asia: Dynamics between the state, arts and creative industries (pp. 139–152). Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan.
32.
KornbergerM. (2010). Brand society: How brands transform management and lifestyle. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
33.
LeeH.-K.LimL. (2014). Cultural policies in East Asia: An introduction. In LeeH.-K.LimL. (Eds.), Cultural policies in East Asia: Dynamics between the state, arts and creative industries (pp. 1–14). Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan.
34.
LukesS. (2005). Power: A radical view (2nd ed.). New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan.
35.
MarginsonS. (2013). The impossibility of capitalist markets in higher education. Journal of Education Policy, 28, 353–370.
36.
McCloryJ. (2011). The new persuaders: An international ranking of soft power. London, England: Institute for Government.
37.
MiheljS. (2011). Media nations: Communicating belonging and exclusion in the modern world. Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan.
38.
MillerT.GovilN.McMurriaJ.MaxwellR.WangT. (2005). Global Hollywood 2 (2nd ed.). London, England: BFI Publishing.
39.
NyeJ. S. (1990). Bound to lead: The changing nature of American power. New York, NY: Basic Books.
40.
NyeJ. S. (2004). Soft power: The means to success in world politics. New York, NY: Public Affairs.
41.
NyeJ. S. (2011). The future of power: Its changing nature and use in the twenty-first century. New York, NY: Public Affairs.
42.
OtmazginN. K. (2007). Contesting soft power: Japanese popular culture in east and southeast Asia. International Relations of the Asia-Pacific, 8, 73–101.
RawnsleyG. D. (2015). To know us is to love us: Public diplomacy and international broadcasting in contemporary Russia and China. Politics, 35, 273–286.
45.
SawyerR. D.SawyerM. (1993). The seven military classics of ancient China. Boulder, CO: Westview Press.
46.
SchillerH. I. (1976). Communication and cultural domination. White Plains, NY: International Arts and Sciences Press.
47.
SchillerH. I. (1991). Not yet the post-imperialist era. Critical Studies in Mass Communication, 8, 13–28.
48.
SparksC. (2012). Media and cultural imperialism reconsidered. Chinese Journal of Communication, 5, 281–299.
49.
SparksC. (2016). Global integration, state policy and the media. In FlewT.IosifidisP.SteemersJ. (Eds.), Global media and national policies: The return of the state (pp. 49–74). Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan.
50.
SteemersJ. (2016). Blurred lines: Public service media and the state. In FlewT.IosifidisP.SteemersJ. (Eds.), Global media and national policies: The return of the state (pp. 139–155). Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan.
51.
StrangeS. (1994). States and markets (2nd ed.). New York, NY: St. Martin’s Press.
52.
StraubhaarJ. (2014). Mapping “Global” in global communication and media studies. In WilkinsK.StraubhaarJ. S.Kumar (Eds.), Global communication (pp. 10–34). New York, NY: Routledge.
53.
ThussuD. K. (Ed.). (2010). International communications: A reader. London, England: Routledge.
TomlinsonJ. (1999). Globalization and culture. Cambridge, UK: Polity Press.
56.
TunstallJ. (2008). The media were American: U.S. mass media in decline. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.
57.
XiJ. (2014). The governance of China. Beijing, China: Foreign Languages Press.
58.
XieT. (2015, April). China’s soft power obsession. The Diplomat, pp. 27–34.
59.
XinX. (2012). How the market is changing China’s news: The case of Xinhua news agency. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books.
60.
YasumotoS. (2014). Popular culture: Islands of fandom in East Asia. IAFOR Journal of Asian Studies, 1, 91–106.
61.
YùdiceG. (2003). The expediency of culture: Uses of culture in the global era. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
62.
ZhangX. (2011). China’s international broadcasting: A case study of CCTV international. In WangJ. (Ed.), Soft power in China: Public diplomacy through communication (pp. 57–71). New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan.
