Cathay is already a political and military superpower, merely its leaders dream of competing with the U.s.a.' cultural influence likewise. Antony Funnell surveys the extent of Chinese 'soft ability' so far.

The Chinese philosopher Confucius died in the 5th century BC, but he was reborn in the mid 2000s.

Actually, rehabilitated is probably a better fit. In 2004 he was hoisted from his grave (in the figurative sense, of course) and put to work in the service of a political regime that in one case sought to obliterate his place in history.

In November that year, Communist Party officials presided over the opening of China's first 'Confucian Plant'. Located in the Southward Korean capital letter, Seoul, it was designed equally a way of softening the country's epitome abroad. In that location are now hundreds of similar institutes right beyond the world.

The Chinese moving-picture show industry is really domestically based. They'd dear to have success overseas. It hasn't happened.

The following year, President Hu Jintao went ane stride further in the official revival of the great philosopher'south reputation when he informed the Chinese people of the deep links he'd discovered between Confucian thought and the sort of socialism preached past the CCP.

Information technology was a long way from the dark days of the Cultural Revolution and the 'Criticise Lin, criticise Confucius' entrada launched by Mao and his wife Jiang Qing.

Press-ganging the aboriginal sage into the service of the Chinese Communist Party but makes sense, of form, when you recollect just how unpopular the party'due south image has long been.

In that location was a time non so long ago when the CCP didn't actually care about the rest of the world or what it idea, but this is the 21st century and prototype and branding are everything.

Current President 11 Jinping has sought to make a mark for himself as an image re-maker; seeking to scrub clean his political party's reputation through a major ongoing anti-corruption bulldoze. He'southward besides championed the power of fine art and pic to increase Cathay's international influence, to make it a cultural as well equally a political and military power.

The official line is to 'send culture out into the world'.

Using culture equally a form of international influence is what Harvard Academy's Joseph Nye famously calls 'soft power'.

'It'southward not enough to have just soft ability, but information technology does make a divergence if y'all have information technology, if yous can combine your soft and hard ability into what I telephone call smart power, then yous are better placed than if you take the two competing with each other,' he says.

Michael Berry, a professor of contemporary Chinese cultural studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara, references Mao Zedong'due south famous 1942 Yan'an voice communication to argue that civilization has long been a political weapon in Communist china.

'To boil the content of that talk down, information technology was basically that art and politics, or art and propaganda are not separate things,' says the professor. 'That art should be a tool of politics and it should have an ideological function, otherwise it was irrelevant and shouldn't have a space in society.

'So today you are seeing a niggling bit of a throwback to the policy that had dictated and then much of Chinese cultural life for so long,' says Berry.  'It never totally went abroad, but we are definitely seeing an upsurge of some of those policies.

'In many ways Eleven Jinping is embracing many aspects of the practiced erstwhile days of the socialist Mao era. You run across some of that coming dorsum in a foreign form nether Xi Jinping'due south leadership.'

Part of that 'foreign form', as Berry calls it, was a speech delivered in October last year to leading creative figures in Beijing, in which President Xi exhorted Chinese artists not just to send their culture out into the globe, but to brand it ideologically pure.

Modern Chinese fine art, the president said, should embody traditional Chinese civilisation, and information technology shouldn't carry what he described as the 'stench of coin' or become 'the slave of the market place'—statements which seem wildly at odds with the country's market-driven economy.

'Information technology's a clear contradiction,' says Berry, adding that Communist china has long been a country of many contradictions, and that the tension between them is function of everyday life.

'Just await at the style the regime describes what their economy is, which is "socialism with Chinese characteristics". Anyone who is shut to Red china will tell yous socialism as an credo has been expressionless for a very long time in China, and what you are seeing at that place is commercialism gone wild.'

There is, however, an underlying logic in the Chinese leadership'due south desire to promote Chinese culture internationally, he says.

'People talk about merchandise imbalances all the time, simply no one really talks about the cultural imbalance between China and the west.'

'If you lot were to walk onto a higher campus anywhere, say, here in the United States or in Australia, if you would enquire a typical higher student: "who is Lu Xun?" I don't think we'd find that many typical college students who could answer that question, although Lu Xun is the male parent of mod Chinese literature.

'On the other paw, if you were to get to a Chinese campus and ask typical college students: "who is Ernest Hemingway?" Near of them would properly be able to requite you at least a brief description of who that person was. You could play the same exercise for pop civilization figures, for TV stars. The unbalance is very prominent.'

In that sense, the establishment of China's Confucian institutes is about trying to redress that imbalance, particularly around Chinese linguistic communication and literature.

According to Frankfurt-based researcher Falk Hartig there are now around 475 institutes and some 850 smaller Confucian classrooms spread across western capitals, the Asia-Pacific and Africa.

Hartig, who has lived and worked in Red china and is now based at Goethe Academy, outset began researching the institutes and their mission in 2007.

The party line, he says, is that the institutes have been flourishing due to international need.

'This is very much the official narrative that China says: we are asked by foreign friends and want to help them and then that they can learn more than about Chinese civilisation and they can get access to Chinese language,' he says.

Leaving their sheer number aside, co-ordinate to Hartig it'due south difficult to estimate the institutes' true influence and value.

'The other question, of class, is related to quality; what kind of language courses are they offering? What kind of cultural activities are they offer? Besides the big question is how tin Confucius Institutes really influence the epitome of China. The impact of these institutes; information technology's rather difficult to measure or quantify.'

In recent years there have been criticisms; accusations that some institutes are piffling more propaganda vehicles for the Chinese Communist Party. In both the United States and Canada at that place accept been closures as a result. Hartig says some of the criticisms acquit an element of truth.

'They are not really spreading communist propaganda, I would say, only nevertheless they are express in what they tin do and what topics they tin can deal with. I would say it'southward somewhere in betwixt. Information technology'south not as friendly and harmless every bit some of the Confucius Establish people would propose, but it'southward likewise not as sinister every bit some of the critics would say.'

Withal, co-ordinate to Hartig, continuing suspicion has clearly been a limiting cistron for the institutes, particularly in the westward.

'I think just people who have a rather positive image of Cathay would get to a Confucius Institute. And then no one who really has issues with Prc would go to a Confucius Found and afterwards would say: "Oh, the Confucius Institute really changed my perception of Cathay." I call up it'southward something like preaching to the converted.'

One of the dandy features of American soft ability during the 20th century and into this millennium has been the US flick industry. American films take long dominated international box office sales. They've also been highly influential in making American tastes and fashions universal.

Communist china now has the 2nd largest film industry in the earth and according to the University of California'southward Stanley Rosen, information technology'southward likely to surpass Hollywood by 2018.

Rosen says Eleven Jinping clearly sees potential in using Chinese cinema as an additional soft power instrument. Yet, he believes that co-opting the industry in such a manner will not be without its difficulties.

'The Chinese motion-picture show industry is really domestically based,' says Rosen. 'They'd beloved to accept success overseas. It hasn't happened. I lecture in China on how to internationalise the flick industry and increase soft power, only it just hasn't been successful, partly because the films are in Chinese, they take Chinese cultural and historical components—they don't resonate very well with the outside globe.'

Even where Chinese films practice accept on a more than universally appealing style, says Rosen, the themes they pursue are oftentimes more than reflective of the American Dream rather than whatever kind of Chinese equivalent.

'A movie like Finding Mr Right, a big striking in 2013, is all well-nigh leaving China. It'southward based on Sleepless in Seattle, the American picture. It's based on succeeding in the United States. You observe relatively few films in Mainland china that are successful that don't have a dream that is similar to the American Dream.

'Even films similar Tiny Times, which is all about ... leading the proficient life, ownership fancy clothes, it'due south really all about materialism. That individualism, that striving for success for the individual rather than the nation, that'due south the American Dream. The Chinese dream of Eleven Jinping is supposed to be national rejuvenation, even more than individual fabric success.'

Rosen says in reality many filmmakers pay lip service to the wishes of the state while continuing to make films they know will find a receptive Chinese audience.

'You practise what y'all need to do to succeed. Yous say at meetings that this is a not bad thought and so on and and then forth, nosotros accept to do this, but you know it'southward contradictory. I've written some papers recently which look at some of what leading moving-picture show authorities say they want. They desire to have the international market, they want Chinese soft power to succeed, and in the same sentence they say we want our films to take socialist core values.

'Well, there's a basic contradiction. If you want to succeed in the international market, you are not going to brand films with "socialist core values". You lot take to make a choice.'

Australian National University historian Douglas Craig doubts the Beijing leadership will always achieve soft power success only by promoting the country'due south cultural attributes.

He argues the experience of the Soviet Union shows there is no straight correlation between a nation's political and armed services ability and its cultural influence.

'In what was known as the Third Globe and in Africa during the Cold War, the Soviet bloc tried very hard to establish a cultural presence in those nations and generally found it very difficult to do so.

'What they decided to concentrate much more on was infrastructure development and evolution projects in the Tertiary World, rather than what y'all might phone call propaganda or, in a more neutral manner, cultural diplomacy.

'Don't forget the Soviet Union, like the The states, was pushing an ideological message in the Cold State of war. The Soviet Matrimony was selling itself as a Marxist-Leninist state that was involved with, and concerned about, social equity and equality. The United states of america was pushing a liberal democratic backer mode. And then information technology was an ideological boxing, but the ideology of the United States did bear witness to be much more attractive.'

Craig says he sees Beijing increasingly following the Soviet Union'due south example, refocusing its soft ability efforts away from a focus on culture and further toward economic assistance. On that score, Xi Jinping and his colleagues take already had an early success.

Commonwealth of australia, Republic of korea and the United Kingdom have recently signalled their intention to join a new development depository financial institution proposed by China.

The AIIB—the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank—is a US$l billion initiative that the University of California's Stanley Rosen says is a clear challenge to the economic soft power influence America exerts through organisations similar the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund.

'If you lot talk to people in China, fifty-fifty read what's in the Chinese media, they were quite surprised, very surprised that they got such buy-in from the Western European powers despite heavy-handed American lobbying against information technology,' he says.

'It volition have an impact on the Earth Depository financial institution, the IMF and so on considering this is in some ways a competitor to these organisations controlled by the United states of america. And then they are going to be very careful with this to prove it's a model for the future of China's office in the international community. '

Harvard University's Joseph Nye says there will be challenges alee for China in trying to perfect its soft power capabilities whilst still maintaining one-party authoritarian rule. Contempo Chinese sabre-rattling toward its Asian neighbours risks complicating matters farther, he argues.

'Communist china today, when it tries to take areas like Scarborough Reef from the Philippines and so forth, is essentially using its hard power in ways which undercut its soft power.'

Equally Confucius in one case wrote: 'Life is really elementary, but nosotros insist on making it complicated.'

  • stone statue of Confucius

Exploring new ideas, new approaches, new technologies—the edge of alter. Future Tense analyses the social, cultural and economic fault lines arising from rapid transformation.