My Take | Can China present a ‘credible, lovable and respectable’ image to the world?
- The country may be counting on support from the Global South but concern about Beijing’s behaviour is not just confined to the West
Joseph Nye, the academic who coined the term soft power, recently weighed in on the debate about whether China should continue to follow Deng Xiaoping’s approach of lying low and biding its time.
In an interview with the South China Morning Post, the Harvard academic pointed to Beijing’s image problems in Asia and democratic countries.
Although Beijing has effectively ditched Deng’s dictum in the era of Xi Jinping, it rarely acknowledges this publicly or blames itself for its image problem.
As China marks Deng’s 120th birthday this week, the country’s top diplomat Wang Yi has called for concerted efforts to “foster a favourable external environment”.
In an article published last week in the party’s mouthpiece People’s Daily, Wang claimed that China was in a “period of development in which strategic opportunities, risks and challenges are concurrent, and uncertainties and unforeseen factors are rising”.
