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Source: Getty

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China's Charm: Implications of Chinese Soft Power

While China’s rising soft power could prove benign or even beneficial in some respects, it could prove disastrous for Southeast Asia—for democratization, for anticorruption initiatives, and for good governance.

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By Josh Kurlantzick
Published on Jun 5, 2006
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Asia

The Asia Program in Washington studies disruptive security, governance, and technological risks that threaten peace, growth, and opportunity in the Asia-Pacific region, including a focus on China, Japan, and the Korean peninsula.

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In a new Policy Brief, China’s Charm: Implications of Chinese Soft Power, Carnegie Visiting Scholar Joshua Kurlantzick analyzes China’s influence and policy tools of soft power and argues that, while China’s rising soft power could prove benign or even beneficial in some respects, it could prove disastrous for Southeast Asia—for democratization, for anticorruption initiatives, and for good governance.

Over the past decade China has downplayed its hard power in Southeast Asia, instead creating a strategy to build its soft power. For the first time in post-WWII history, the United States may be facing a situation in which another country’s appeal outstrips its own in an important region, a change sure to shock the United States. Before China’s appeal spreads to other parts of the developing world, U.S. policy makers need to understand how China exerts soft power, if China’s soft power could be dangerous to developing nations, and whether elements of China’s charm could threaten U.S. interests. 

Click on the link above for the full text of this Carnegie publication.

Joshua Kurlantzick is a visiting scholar in the China Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

About the Author

Josh Kurlantzick

Former Visiting Scholar, China Program

A special correspondent for The New Republic, a columnist for Time, and a senior correspondent for The American Prospect, Kurlantzick assesses China’s relationship with the developing world, including Southeast Asia, Africa, and Latin America.

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Josh Kurlantzick
Former Visiting Scholar, China Program
Josh Kurlantzick
Political ReformDemocracyEconomyTradeMilitaryDomestic PoliticsChinaSoutheast AsiaEast Asia

Carnegie does not take institutional positions on public policy issues; the views represented herein are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of Carnegie, its staff, or its trustees.

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