Abstract

Few governments worldwide have embraced, appropriated and exercised soft power like the People’s Republic of China (PRC). From cuisine and CCTV (China Central Television) to pandas and the Confucius Institutes, the PRC has for years devoted an extraordinary amount of resources – financial and otherwise – to the rapid expansion of its global outreach and engagement programs. Initiated and coordinated from Beijing, China’s presence is now felt in every corner of the world, just as its new economic and strategic powers are also expanding rapidly. Wang Yiwei, a professor of diplomacy at Beijing-based Renmin University of China and former professor at Shanghai-based Fudan University, has observed on soft power, ‘few Western international relations phrases have penetrated as deeply or broadly into the Chinese vocabulary in recent years’ (Wang, 2008: 258).