“We must focus on getting the tone right,” Chinese President Xi Jinping told a gathering of senior Communist Party officials earlier this year. He exhorted them to “strive to create a credible, lovable and respectable image” of the country. Soft power, he signaled, mattered. Yet clumsy efforts over the past few days to muffle international outrage over missing tennis star Peng Shuai show just how hard it is for China to balance domestic imperatives and international goals — and what it will sacrifice to retain control.
For well over a decade, soft power has been on Beijing’s agenda, arguably since then-President Hu Jintao told officials in 2007 that the country would need non-military clout and cultural attractiveness to achieve its potential. The Beijing Summer Olympics, a clear step in that direction, followed some months later. China hasn’t abandoned the ambition. But faced with geopolitical and other threats, months away from another Games and a twice-a-decade National Party Congress that should anoint Xi for a third term, a tight grip and stability matter more.
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November 23, 2021 at 05:00AM
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China's Tennis Mess Is an Unforced Soft Power Error - Bloomberg
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