The Iron Hand in a Velvet Glove: Domestic soft power and the struggle for cultural influence in China

Abstract

The aim of this thesis is to shed light upon the concept of soft power used in domestic governance by the CCP between the years of 2014 and 2017. During the initial research stages, a shift in rhetoric was noticed in soft power discourses in China between the years 2014-2015 that had not been covered by previous research, thus giving the thesis its timeframe. The thesis builds on the puzzling observation that the Chinese Communist Party applies “soft power”, a concept known from the field of international relations and foreign policy, to an at least equal extent domestically – and does so increasingly over the course of the last decade. This study therefore examines domestic soft power in China as a government strategy, offering insights into how domestic soft power is exerted and the goals it seeks to achieve. For this purpose, this study uses a Foucauldian discourse analysis of politically guided discourse in People’s Daily newspaper and academic texts from the Chinese Cultural Soft Power Research Centre. The two-tier focus helps this study understand how domestic soft power is defined by the Chinese government, and consequently how it is interpreted and analysed by Chinese academics. One of the most interesting findings the study presents is a two-stage rhetorical shift in soft power discussion in China after 2014. The first stage is a focus shift from traditional values as the core of Chinese “cultural soft power” to socialist core values, indirectly defining the term “culture” in as both the political system and mainstream ideology. The second stage is the emergence of the terms “self-confidence” and “cultural self-confidence” in soft power rhetoric, where the “self” is defined in terms of nation, government and mainstream ideology. This study puts domestic soft power use in the context of propaganda, and argues that domestic soft power post-2014 is indeed part of the CCP’s overall propaganda strategy, used as a “counter-soft power” to Western cultural and ideological influence, where a sense of a zero-sum game between the two emerges. Secondly, governmentality theory guides the argument that domestic soft power seeks to create a “governable” public through a series of indigenisation and consensus shaping initiatives in academic and cultural sectors. In this respect, this study argues that domestic soft power in China has a goal of establishing a national identity which is presented as opposite to “The West”.