Why soft power matters China's growing popularity broadens its public appeal and allows other countries to cooperate more closely with it, including on defense cooperation. One Filipino defense official put it to me this way: "Ten years ago in the Philippines, which is a vibrant democracy, with a very free press, if the Chinese had come to us and offered us closer defense training or an alliance, it would have been unthinkable, because it would have gotten out to the public and criticized. Now we know it's essentially acceptable to the public, because China's image has improved quite well, and so the Philippines has pushed forward with closer defense and economic cooperation with China." So public appeal does matter. Conversely, here in the US we often thought it didn't matter that much, but when it comes to the run-up to the war in Iraq, when you would like cooperation with Turkey, our long-time friend, but Turkey's a democracy now, and the government of Turkey knows that US public appeal is not so strong in Turkey, and we're unable to get their support for an incursion from Turkey into northern Iraq. Rumsfeld himself said that was one of the major factors that hindered the war effort at first. You see the same thing with economic cooperation–countries in Africa, Asia, other parts of the world becoming more comfortable in their relationship with China, partly because it's easier for them to tolerate China's public appeal. The US still has a very close relationship with Saudi Arabia, but the Saudi government must necessarily be worried about the public appeal of having a relationship with the US It's not surprising that the Saudi government has formed close links to China and thought about building China its own strategic petroleum reserve. As China has become more influential, opinion leaders from all over the world are visiting or studying there. One of the things the US has always drawn upon is the generations of opinion leaders who had come to the US for education, gone home and been the best ambassadors for the US – Margaret Thatcher, Hamid Karzai, President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo in the Philippines. China is increasingly going to play that role, and that will necessarily impact how other country leaders think of it. Finally, as China becomes more acceptable economically, it's going to be able to drive Asia as a more integrating trading region. There will be less fear of it and China can drive trade. Questions In the short term, China has wielded a significant amount of power. But in the long term it faces very substantial questions, as long as it remains the kind of country it is. First, is China really a model for other countries like Vietnam, Syria, Iran, South Africa? Yes, it's developed and has remained an authoritarian state. But do they really have any different model of development? Second, as China becomes a greater actor in the world, can it provide the kind of positive goods that the US has provided for years – such as security and response to disasters? After the December 2004 tsunami hit Asia, though the US was very unpopular in a number of the affected countries, those countries had to rely on the US because no one else was able to provide that type of disaster relief. (Actually, the US response to the tsunami did improve its public image among those countries.) Third and most important, China has gone far with its idea that it, unlike the US, doesn't interfere in other countries' affairs. However, the domestic affairs in a lot of the countries with which China has relations are crying out for some kind of resolution. China has said it won't interfere in Sudan, but many in Sudan would like some sort of interference, because right now the situation is untenable. The government in Myanmar has a close relationship with China. Many people, activists of a movement that was elected 15, 17 years ago, would like China to push the government to recognize them. Noninterference isn't a policy that can exist in the world over the long term. China has begun to think about this. They've sent their own envoy to Sudan, they've thought about changing their relationship with Myanmar. They're realizing that if you're going to be a real global power, you can't necessarily stick with this philosophy. But if they're going to diverge from this philosophy, are they then just going to be like the US? Or can they be somehow something different at the same time? -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Joshua Kurlantzick is special correspondent for the New Republic and a visiting scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. He has covered Southeast Asia and China as a correspondent for US News and World Report and The Economist, and his writings on Asia have appeared in Foreign Affairs, the New York Times Magazine, and many other publications. This essay is based on the BookTalk he gave at FPRI on 25 July. Reprinted with permission from Foreign Policy Research Institute. Copyright (c) 2007 Foreign Policy Research Institute. http://www.isn.ethz.ch -- Its quite long, I agree.. but its worth reading, no?