DISPATCHES FROM
AMERICA When soft power
fails By John Feffer
The oldest Chinatown in the world is not
in New York or San Francisco or even Yokohama. It
is in Manila, a fact that comes up often when
Beijing talks about its longstanding connection to
the islands that lie about 600 miles (900
kilometers) to the southeast. Similarly, China
boasts of its three Confucius Institutes in the
Philippines where Filipinos can learn Mandarin and
appreciate the many facets of Chinese culture.
Since 2011, Chinoy TV has also spread the
Confucius Institute message to all the Filipinos
who can't physically attend the cultural events.
Trade between the two countries,
meanwhile, is expanding rapidly. In 1996, mainland
China didn't even make it into the top 10 of trade
partners of the Philippines. Today, with trade
volume at US$30 billion, China has become number
three. After a set of
talks in Beijing in 2011, the
two sides agreed to double this figure by 2016,
which would vault China into the top spot.
China's exercise of soft power in the
Philippines is by no means unique in the region.
Beijing has Confucian Institutes throughout Asia -
seven in Indonesia, nine in Australia, 12 in
Japan, and 17 in South Korea - and China is the
leading trade partner for a number of Southeast
Asian countries.
It would seem, from this
quick thumbnail sketch, that Chinese soft power
has been extraordinarily successful in the
Philippines as in the rest of Asia. But that's
only part of the story.
China, after all,
has not restricted itself solely to the exercise
of soft power to increase its influence in the
region. In 1994, in an attempt to claim disputed
territory in the South China Sea, China built
structures on Mischief Reef, well within the
Exclusive Economic Zone of the Philippines. Manila
didn't respond militarily to this provocation. But
it has asserted its claims to the disputed region
in other ways, for instance by arranging a seismic
survey to determine underwater oil resources.
Chinese patrol boats attempted to disrupt the
survey. Later, Manila seized Chinese fishermen
operating in the area, and China retaliated by
refusing boatloads of Philippine bananas.
Although China has not asserted its claims
to the South China Sea through overwhelming
military force, its rhetoric can be quite
overreaching. Beijing's "nine-dash line" concept
of Chinese sovereignty takes about as large a bite
as possible out of the South China Sea. In 2012,
Chinese military spending went up 11%, pushing its
official spending over $100 billion. For the
United States, which spends about seven times as
much on the military, Chinese military increases
don't represent a significant threat. But for the
Philippines and other Southeast Asian countries,
Chinese spending has contributed to a major arms
race in the region.
With its soft-power
overtures, China has tried to expand its influence
without disquieting its neighbors and trade
partners. But through its hard-power posturing,
China has achieved the exact opposite. The
Philippines, for instance, has moved inexorably
closer to the United States in an effort to
balance China. Manila negotiated a doubling in
Foreign Military Financing from the United States
in 2012 and has made its military bases more
accessible to US forces. This in a country that
unceremoniously kicked the United States out of
the Subic and Clark military bases back in 1991.
The Philippines has also sought US help in
regional organizations to push back against China
on the issue of the disputed territory.
The South China Sea is not the only place
where Chinese hard power is undercutting its soft
power. Currently China and Japan are escalating
their claims over the Diaoyu/Senkaku islands. The
Japanese government recently "bought" the islands
from a private owner; China has sent planes to
monitor Japanese fighter jets in the area. The
fact that China is Japan's leading export market
has not seemed to moderate statements coming out
of Tokyo.
China's handling of soft power
and hard power is not a contradiction. Beijing's
approach is actually copied straight from the
originator of the concept: the United States.
In 1990, Harvard professor Joseph Nye
developed the concept of soft power as a way to
preserve US power in a changing world. He never
imagined that the United States would abandon hard
power. Rather, he urged the United States to
increasingly rely on diplomacy, economic
relations, and cultural exchanges at a time when
it seemed that military force was yielding
diminishing returns with the end of the Cold War.
Thomas Friedman formalized this dual
approach with his corollary to Nye's theory: that
the soft power of McDonald's needs the hard power
of McDonnell Douglas to be successful. The United
States should strive to preserve its unipolar
position in the world, Friedman argued, with a
hidden fist to complement the hidden hand of the
market. China's approach to the South China Sea is
simply an Asian version of this US strategy.
Over the past decade, the US approach -
redubbed "smart power" by the likes of outgoing
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton - has produced
some very prominent failures - in Iraq under the
leadership of advertising executive Charlotte
Beers, in Africa under the dubious leadership of
AFRICOM, in the Muslim world in the wake of Barack
Obama's famous speech in Cairo.
In each of
these cases, US hard power undercut its soft power
aims. Iraqis were unenthusiastic about US-financed
magazines as long as US soldiers were an occupying
force. Africans receiving humanitarian aid from
NGO workers accompanied by US soldiers worried
about the ultimate purpose of an assistance
program carried out under the Pentagon's
direction. And although Muslims cheered President
Obama's words in Cairo, they watched as drone
attacks continued to claim the "collateral damage"
of civilian lives, the vast majority being
Muslims.
Washington has been reluctant to
reevaluate "soft power" when it seems so obviously
a fig leaf for the assertion of military
dominance. But perhaps by looking at the palpable
failures of Chinese efforts in Asia, US
policymakers could learn some lessons about
strategy. Other countries in Asia that aspire to
cultivate both hard power and soft power - Japan,
South Korea - should also take note: you rarely
can have it both ways.
John
Feffer is currently an Open Society fellow in
Eastern Europe. He is on leave from his position
as co-director of Foreign Policy in Focus.
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