Lets leave the arguable public diplomacy of the United States, and the arrogant one of Israel; today I would like to present a little of China’s public diplomacy.
China is one of the biggest countries, with 1.34 billion people, a thousand-years culture and its economy is boosting. (For further details see http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/africa/country_profiles/1287798.stm). However, as Ingrid d’Hooghe states, China is facing problems related to its image, and the opposition of the global public opinion over issues such as pollution, human rights abuses, the Tibet issue, its policies toward Taiwan and Hong Kong, its military force (d‘Hooghe, 2007, 14), the smuggling of nuclear material and its one party regime. D’Hooghe argues that China is addressing the public opinion through public diplomacy manoeuvred by the Office of Foreign Propaganda of the Chinese Communist Party and the Information Office (d’Hooghe, 2007, 21), which exercise great control over the local media.
The fact that the Chinese government exercises authority over its diplomatic machinery says much of the importance of public diplomacy in the contemporary world and I would like to analyse it through the main goals the Chinese public diplomacy is aimed at. In the d’Hooghe’s diplomatic paper is stated that the main goals of the Chinese public diplomacy are to be seen as a country committed to create an “harmonious society” within it, to be seen as good economic partner, to be seen as a force for peace in the international community and finally to be acknowledged as an ancient and vibrant culture ( d’Hooghe, 2007, 18). Someone would argue that those are quite high level goals for a one-party-state which makes full use of the death penalty and of the birth control, which is accused to perpetrate the recent economic crisis because of its currency policy (http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSN2324379920100323), and which vetoed the intervention in Darfur and more recently in Sri-Lanka and is itself involved in the Tibet question.
However China understood that with a good rhetoric it can cover the problems or shift the attention from those issues, especially when supported by censorship and a restrained access to the territory, and that is what its public diplomacy is mainly aimed at.
China has always had a special care of the control of its informative media but especially of the foreign media, which are blamed by the Chinese government to be the main responsible of China’s bad image in the world, arguing that they show just the bad face of China (d’Hooghe, 2007, 17).
The main threat for China is the Internet, which is the most difficult media to control. To address the problem, following Google refusal to contribute to the Chinese censorship, the Chinese government is deciding to shut it down so restraining the information of its citizens as well as limiting the exchange of opinion from the latter to the foreign public.
So doing China constrains others’ public diplomacy, fearing that, knowing inconvenient stories from abroad, its citizen can raise against the government, and prevents its “public diplomats” to express negative view of the country. In fact, it can be argued that since public diplomacy is an important tool for self-presentation, and China is facing many problems with its image abroad, it has to be careful of any information coming in and going out from the country, and a public diplomacy fully under state control reduces the chance to present a bad image of the country.
From the example of China we can understand the importance of self-presentation through the public diplomacy, and that, especially when words are not supported by actions, a state-controlled public diplomacy is required to direct the public opinion, as we have seen in the US public diplomacy after the 9/11 through the Shared Values Campaign which was under government control.
For further details on China and Google see:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/mar/23/google-china-firewall-censorship-internet
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/01/13/AR2010011302908.html
For further details on China and the media censorship see:
http://www.cfr.org/publication/11515/
For d'Hooghe diplomatic paper see:
http://www.clingendael.nl/publications/2007/20070700_cdsp_paper_hooghe.pdf
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I admit that this is one of the best post i have read, i agree with you on the point that different from many other totalitarian states the chines government still cares about their global reputation states. as they are trying to they states to the rest of the world.In Angola many developing countries like Angola the chines government is busy promoting their culture and even their economic policies. people need to understand that China relays on export and they don't want to have bad reputation.
ReplyDeleteI believe China is way too arrogant to care about its reputation even for exportation purposes.
ReplyDeleteWhen the French President N.Sarkozy went to China and tried to raise the issue of Human Rights there, China's authorities rightly stated that they have nothing to learn from a country that has approximatively 65 million people and still struggles with its crime and unemployment rates. I believe that in a country like China having to deal with a massive population, extreme measures are necessary to keep the population under control otherwise the crime rate and the collective sense of security would just explode.
Issues such as the freedom of speach, information, death penalty or birth control are very serious and sad issues but only from a Western point of view. Arguing against those, would be interfering with the internal affairs of another state and to condemn China for its lack of respect of the HR would amount to propaganda as well. Especially if those criticisms are made by states that control the unfair markets all around the globe, sell military technologies to dictatorships and were colonial powers just 30 to 40 years ago.
Welcome to a hypocrite international system, where it is fashionable to condemn undemocratic, or elseway controversial states but even more fashionable to make economic profit by completely ignoring those ethical standards...