Xiuli Wang - Winning American Hearts and Minds: China’s Image Building Efforts in the 21st Century

Given that a countrys national image is an important factor in international affairs, countries are paying more attention to use public diplomacy tools to shape their image. This book examines Chinas recent image building efforts, including head of state visits, international broadcasting, social media, education diplomacy, Confucius Institute, international mega events, etc.

In todays era of globalization, with personnel and products flowing among different countries, corporations and governments are paying more attention to their international public images. Studies on global marketing have found that country image plays an important part in consumers evaluation and purchase intention of imported products: a negative image is likely to cause considerable loss of foreign markets, while a positive image is associated with better evaluation and higher intent to purchase (dAstous & Ahmed, ).

More importantly, since public opinion increasingly influences foreign policy, a negative image perceived by the foreign public could lead to adoption of unfavorable policies. That is why public diplomacy, defined as governmental efforts to inform or influence public opinion in other countries in order to reduce misperceptions and promote national interests (Tuch, ), has gained so much attention from scholars, government officials and public relations practitioners.

Together with the emergence and increasing popularity of soft power, a concept developed by Nye () and defined as the ability to win hearts and minds of foreign publics through attraction rather than coercion, various programs targeted at influencing foreign public opinion have been developed through tourism promotion, business expansion, and cultural and educational exchanges in many countries. China is no exception.

Since the Reform and Opening policy began in the late 1970s, Chinas economy has grown rapidly, and the country surpassed Japan as the worlds second largest economy in 2010 (McCurry & Kollewe, ). In order to counter the China threat theory, the Chinese government has made great efforts in the past decades to improve the image of China. This book focuses on Chinas global efforts at image building in the twenty-first century with a special attention paid to the United States, since the US is currently the most powerful nation in the world and Sino-American relations are a matter of great interest.

Image-building is one of the important concepts in public diplomacy. As mentioned earlier, public diplomacy is commonly defined as the cultivation by governments of public opinion in other nations. By cultivating public opinion abroad, countries can more effectively pursue their national interests. Before the twenty-first Century, China either paid no attention to public diplomacy or, when it did, made clumsy attempts that bordered on pure propaganda (Aoyama, ).

Promotion of Chinese culture and language studies is a major component of this public diplomacy, contributing to spreading Chinese culture and increasing Chinas global influence. The Reform and Opening policy since the 1970s has led to growing international interest in Chinese culture, at the same time creating incentives for Chinese leaders to expand the nations culture influence. Since the early 2000s, China has been aggressive in promoting the study of Chinese all over the world. Mirroring cultural associations like the British Council and Spains Cervantes Institute (to name a few), China has established Confucius Institutes and Confucius classrooms worldwide starting from 2004, in an effort to promote both Chinese language and culture. By the end of 2018, 548 Confucius Institutes have been opened with partner foreign universities, alongside 1193 Confucius classrooms based in both primary and secondary schools (Jakhar, ).