July 4, 2023
Today’s post is a comment on a thought-provoking LinkedIn article about the CCP and soft power (pictured above). The full text is at the bottom of this short page.
I wonder if anyone else read Matthew Fulco’s commentary and the subject matter formed an immediate association between CCP and GOP?
Parties where deep ideological commitment has been side-stepped for power at any price. There is no interest in positive soft power because it is seen by power brokers as unnecessary, cumbersome, indirect and thus wasteful. Why try to attract adherents when psychometric, political and economic manipulation and coercion are more effective and efficient?
The cult of the Leader supplants ideology. The party provides the apparatus but everything is suborned to the whim of the leader. Xi thought and abandonment of the GOP platform, come to mind.
It remains to be seen if Xi could get away with illegal possession (and/or sale?) of China's nuclear secrets and assessments of China's vulnerability to military attack - let alone mounting a coup attempt (unnecessary in China and the aim of a coup attempt here) - but continued ironclad support of the party leadership and rank and file for Xi under such conditions might be more problematic under the CCP than it is for Trump under the GOP.
There is enormous use of negative soft power internally - aka pro- Leader propaganda - flooding the US system. The maga media machine is more powerful and effective than anything the CCP can muster. I suspect the Trump as Christ or Rambo iconography would be even a bit too much for Xi's target audiences.
Certainly the prime directive of ideational control, crushing of dissent, scapegoating of the powerless, and narratives of supremacy of the in-group empowering them to repeatedly call out-groups traitors deserving of execution; shares much with CCP techniques - although large scale execution of opponents is more historical in Chinese political practice. It remains to be seen if the GOP will be able to limit all the hyper pro-violence narratives to just rhetoric if they retake power. As American democratic norms disappear, new ways of doing business will no doubt become normalized - esp when checks and balances are negated and what the Party says, goes. Even his supporters would agree, in his heart of hearts, in retribution mode, Trump would happily see Hillary, the Bidens and all other top tier thought criminals swing from a rope.
Matthew Falco’s full text:
Chinese civilization once enjoyed almost limitless soft power in its periphery, as seen by the widespread use of classical Chinese in neighboring countries like Japan, Korea and Vietnam, and those countries' elites' adoption of other elements of high dynastic Chinese culture. The Japanese even built Kyoto based upon what Chang'an - then the most cosmopolitan city in the world - looked like at the time.
Today, China's traditional culture remains influential, but it cannot exert significant soft power otherwise, especially in comparison to its neighbors Japan and South Korea. Americans in my generation grew up when Japan was ascendant. We never saw it as a threat. We all played Nintendo, Sega Genesis and then PlayStation; we listened to music on Sony Walkmans; many of our parents drove Japanese cars, and we learned to love sushi in our teenage years when it became widely available in America. Young people today are having a similar experience with Korean culture, especially K-Pop, and the Koreans actually exported more to the U.S. last year than to China because their cars are so popular here.
Now, it is true that many products sold in the U.S. are made in China, but that does not equate to soft power for China here. Often the opposite.
The only real soft power China had in the U.S. - and in most advanced economies - was when people saw it as some kind of promised land for business, and thought they should learn Chinese for that reason. Now that we can see that idea was a delusion, and Beijing has stopped hiding its capacities and biding its time, opinions of China have soured.
The reason is that the Chinese Communist Party casts a long shadow. Because of the party's renewed paramountcy under Xi Jinping, the way China engages with many other countries is increasingly maladroit. China has few appealing cultural exports these days because businesses, artists, writers and entertainers have so little freedom. Even educational exchanges are plummeting as Chinese universities cut their ties with overseas counterparts to shut out foreign influence.
An updated counterespionage law that goes into effect July 1 will only increase the perception of China as a dangerous and unfriendly place. The U.S. State Department currently has a Level 3 travel advisory for China: Reconsider travel.
Ironically, in 2014 Xi said, "We should increase China’s soft power, give a good Chinese narrative, and better communicate China’s message to the world."
But when the world got the message, it didn't like what it heard.
After the 19th National Congress in 2017, the CCP declared, "Party, government, military, civilian, and academic; east, west, south, north, and center, the Party leads everything."
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