China overtakes UK in soft power rankings for 1st time

[ety]

My friend, your understanding is very clear.

Indian Prime Minister Modi is standing with the Israeli Prime Minister, and India is supporting Israel's crimes against humanity. India is increasingly becoming like our enemy.

Not surprising, Indians support whomever are against China and also whomever are against most Muslims esp Pakistan.

 

[东风夜放花千树]

Not surprising, Indians support whomever are against China and also whomever are against most Muslims esp Pakistan.

No one cares about India; Indians are like clowns. On Chinese internet, we treat news about the US and India as jokes.

India has so many people, and anything they do could make the country strong. But for many years, India has remained the same. Indians only have confidence.

No one cares about the opposition from Indians; China has always stood with Pakistan.

 

[tower9]

No one cares about India; Indians are like clowns. On Chinese internet, we treat news about the US and India as jokes.

India has so many people, and anything they do could make the country strong. But for many years, India has remained the same. Indians only have confidence.

No one cares about the opposition from Indians; China has always stood with Pakistan.

True. What a clown ass country.

 

[ST1976]

Congratulations that China is beating UK in soft power. China does have 1.41 billion people, while UK only has 68 million people.

if the Soft Power means for bluffs of publicity then we find even a LDC country the Bangladesh would be considered more 'Worth' as compared to UK, and its true........

 

[Feroze]

if the Soft Power means for bluffs of publicity then we find even a LDC country the Bangladesh would be considered more 'Worth' as compared to UK, and its true........

I wouldn't be surprised if Bangladesh has a larger soft power than UK in the future.

UK only has a population of 67 million while Bangladesh has a population of 180 million people.

I wish the best for Bangladesh.

 

[ST1976]

I wouldn't be surprised if Bangladesh has a larger soft power than UK in the future.

UK only has a population of 67 million while Bangladesh has a population of 180 million people.

I wish the best for Bangladesh.

sir, we have report that other LDC countries below to Bangladesh are also above par to Britain in terms of "Soft Power" comparisons, with a confirmation that the Australia falls below to even UK .......

the Least Developed Countries, most of them, now well exceed the UK/Australia type NATO allies in terms of "Soft Power" comparisons....

 

[KAL-EL]

Not a really big surprise

 

[ST1976]

India Today Interview : Indian Versus Chinese Soft Power​

As if there were any doubt about India’s mounting anxieties concerning its status vis-à-vis China, the July 12th issue of India Today, India’s largest-circulation newsmagazine, includes an article on Indian versus Chinese soft power that depicts a substantial Indian deficit. This correspondent was interviewed online by India Today’s Shafi Rahman for the piece, “Slouching Tiger, Racing Dragon,” a title which accurately sums up its concerned tone.

Indeed, Rahman proves in his fine, thoughtful article to be rather more pessimistic than I am about the soft power India brings to the global table. While Beijing has a number of enviable attributes at its disposal—not least of which is buckets of money and the willingness to dispense it liberally—China has more soft power impediments and India more advantages than “Slouching Tiger, Racing Dragon” acknowledges, my published quotes in the piece notwithstanding.

This isn’t to say that Rahman doesn’t make many valid points—he does—or that India should be complacent—it shouldn’t. But India shouldn’t be excessively bedazzled by China’s high-profile public diplomacy efforts; nor should New Delhi reflexively seek to emulate or counter Beijing’s policies, as opposed to devising policies based on India’s own innate soft power strengths and potentialities.

With that in mind, here is an edited version of my discussion with Shafi Rahman, which took place through the miracle of the Internet on June 10.

…………………

INDIA TODAY: China is using soft power to appeal to its neighbors and to distant countries alike. India is also making its own efforts. How do you compare the charm offensive of these two countries?

Neal Rosendorf: The term “charm offensive” strongly implies a concerted, overt public relations or propaganda effort aimed at changing or enhancing foreign attitudes toward one’s state. My take is that these sorts of official state PR exercises by themselves are, to paraphrase August Babel, the soft power of fools. If they do not accurately reflect the state’s realities, they are merely putting lipstick on a pig.

A current example of this kind of attempt to obscure reality via “messaging” is offered by the official Chinese Tibet and Xinjiang provincial pavilions at the 2010 Shanghai Expo, which bizarrely paint a picture of happy, peaceful, patriotic regions and completely deny their very troubled, restive recent history, as though no one is aware of what’s been going on. This is silly, and a waste of money, at an otherwise impressive international exhibition.

This isn’t to say that there’s no place for public diplomacy efforts or international appearances by attractive leaders. The Beijing Olympics and Shanghai Expo are good examples—with glitches—of the former; Barack Obama is the current nonpareil practitioner of the latter. Manmohan Singh has proven himself effective in the past in this regard, for example with his U.S. trip last year.

IT: How has Beijing’s new diplomacy altered the dynamics of China’s relationships with other countries?

NR: For all of the talk over the past several years about China’s burgeoning soft power (e.g. Joshua Kurlantzick’s 2007 book on the subject ), I am skeptical that China’s public diplomacy efforts have fundamentally altered for the better any other state’s view of the Middle Kingdom. Countries the world over know without being told that China is the current economic marvel of the world, that it has a rising and dynamic middle class, and that it has a venerable and aesthetically beautiful culture.

But no matter what Chinese public diplomacy does, outsiders are also keenly aware, for example, that the country is an autocracy with severe limits on information flows and public speech, and severe penalties for transgressors; that millions of minority group members consider themselves oppressed; that that the law is not universally applied and corruption is rampant, with sometimes catastrophic results like school building collapses in earthquakes; that almost three-quarters of the country still lives in poverty; and that Beijing is propping up the grotesque North Korean dictatorship.

Neighboring countries still worry about China’s economic and potential military power. Japan’s prime minister recently had to resign when he sought to pull his country out of its security alliance with the U.S. and move closer to Beijing—the Japanese public still fears China far more than it resents the U.S. South Korea, like Japan, may feel ambivalence toward the U.S. but still values the American security umbrella as a hedge against Chinese regional hegemony—and of course Seoul is constantly annoyed by China’s coddling of Kim Jong-Il.

Vietnam is eternally wary toward the hovering giant, as demonstrated by Hanoi’s response to China’s purchase of Russian high-tech “Kilo-class” diesel attack submarines, which was intended to counter American Western Pacific naval superiority: the alarmed Vietnamese were spurred to purchase their own “Kilo” subs in turn in order to counter China, a ready illustration of the Law of Unintended Consequences. While Russia sees value in partnering with China to check U.S. global dominance, Moscow is concerned about losing economic, not to mention demographic, standing in Asia. And the worried tenor of the questions in this online interview underlines India’s sense of anxiety as well as competitiveness toward its neighbor.

Concerning developing world states, China’s combination of avoiding expressions of moral opprobrium toward strategically valuable mischief makers and human rights malefactors like Venezuela, Iran and unpleasant African regimes while providing aid, infrastructure and contracts is arguably the polar opposite of soft power, as it reflects the most unadorned realist calculus of strategic necessity. There’s nothing inherently wrong with this sort of Yuan Diplomacy, but it has nothing to do with the power of attraction or persuasion.

In the U.S., Chinese public diplomacy outreach includes such programs as government support for Mandarin-language study in American public schools and universities, in part through its Confucius Institute program; helping sponsor the design and construction of Chinese gardens throughout the U.S., including at the national arboretum in Washington, DC; and a new “people-to-people” exchange program in concert with the U.S. State Department on the rationale, as stated by Beijing, that “[a] broader and more intensive people-to-people exchange is necessary for the building of positive, cooperative and comprehensive Sino-U.S. relations in the 21st century.”

Needless to say, this last sort of program wouldn’t be necessary if Americans were already positively inclined toward China, rather than apprehensive, as recent U.S. polls have indicated. But the other aforementioned public diplomacy efforts are benign at worst and may bear long-term fruit, if they are not overwhelmed by adverse Chinese policies or emergent American Sinophobia (or both).

IT: What are India’s advantages over China in soft power diplomacy?

NR: Take out the word “diplomacy” and stay focused on soft power per se, which at its most effective is the organic product of a society and its culture rather than of a contrived government policy initiative. The answer then, in a word, is ‘democracy.’ Much stems from the international perception that India’s culture and policies spring from the consent of the citizenry, and that relative to China there is a dependable rule of law. And substantively, a fundamentally free society is a more fertile seedbed of culture and innovation, especially concerning popular and consumer culture, than one that is repressive. It isn’t an accident that, as I’ve written elsewhere, Hollywood is generally much more interested in partnering with Indian rather than Chinese producers.

To follow on to this point, there is an attractive “Indian idea”, of stable representative democracy in a poor, then developing country, and of national citizenship and civil rights transcending ethnic, caste and sectarian divisions and hierarchies. There is no comparable “Chinese idea” (prosperity and order are desirable, but they don’t by themselves fire the imagination).

It should be stressed that when India falls short on its ideals and image of stability—e.g. corruption, Hindu chauvinism, getting dragged down into the muck with Pakistan over Kashmir—India’s soft power suffers.

IT: Can you also discuss role of film industries of the two countries in projecting their image?

NR: Like Hollywood, I put my money on India’s film industry over China’s as long as the two countries maintain their current political systems. Bollywood has a deep history and has proven both resilient and adaptive, and it has millions of non-Indian fans around the world. Indian-heritage American actors are becoming increasingly popular in the U.S. (for example Kal Penn of Harold and Kumar fame), which may in turn make Americans and other audiences that much more receptive to Indian films.

As important as any other factor is that the Indian film industry is private-sector and driven more-or-less exclusively by domestic and international market forces, which encourages the production of attractive, crowd-pleasing and potentially quietly persuasive, in soft power terms, motion pictures. And it doesn’t hurt a bit that pushing the boundaries won’t lead to dire professional and personal consequences, and that official censorship is subject to legal appeal by producers who have a good chance of prevailing.

Contrast this with China’s motion picture industry, in which producers have to constantly run a government gauntlet, with Beijing at least as interested in didactic propagandizing and the prestige of gigantism as in fostering a vibrant and entertaining film sector. A telling juxtaposition is China’s booting of the wildly popular Avatar from local cinemas in order to guarantee screen time for a government-sponsored epic about the life of Confucius, which died at the box office. Yet China Daily recently reported that the Beijing Film Academy is going to establish a major study field in 3-D film production, with a spokesperson declaring with a risible absence of irony that “[a]fter Avatar's box office results, the central government and education authorities stressed a need to strengthen China's moviemaking level.” China seems to think it can alchemize popular cultural success and its soft power benefits by fiat. It can’t.

China has many enormously talented and accomplished filmmakers, with the great Zhang Yimou leading the pack. But even Zhang, who once challenged and vexed Beijing with films like Red Sorghum and Raise the Red Lantern, has more recently pulled in his horns to make pro-government propaganda movies like Hero and work for the regime on projects like the 2008 Olympics. If Zhang Yimou has felt compelled to walk at heel, what chance do other Chinese filmmakers have to innovate and entertain without Beijing pushing them about for its own purposes?

IT: What should India be doing to get an edge in the soft diplomacy battle with China?

NR: The first thing I’ll say is, lose the word “battle”—it’s a fool’s errand to approach the global presentation of one’s country as an analogue of warfare. The second thing I’ll say is, the Indian government is welcome to contract my advisory services for a reasonable fee. Feel free to spread the word.

India Today Interview : Indian Versus Chinese Soft Power

As if there were any doubt about India’s mounting anxieties concerning its status vis-à-vis China, the July 12th issue of India Today, India’s largest-circulation newsmagazine, includes an article on Indian versus Chinese soft power that depicts a substantial Indian deficit. This correspondent...

uscpublicdiplomacy.org

 

[Sainthood 2.0]

China overtakes UK in soft power rankings for 1st time​

The balance of soft power is shifting as AI, luxury, and cultural exports redefine global influence beyond traditional economic dominance.
Steve Price

Published February 20, 2025​

China has surpassed the United Kingdom to become the second most influential soft power nation, according to the 2025 Brand Finance Global Soft Power Index released today. The latest ranking marks a significant shift in global influence, reinforcing China’s growing ability to shape international perceptions through technology, business, and culture.

The annual index, based on a survey of more than 170,000 respondents across 100 countries, highlights China’s rising status across multiple dimensions. Economic diplomacy, technology leadership, and the global expansion of Chinese brands have propelled the country to an all-time high soft power score of 72.8 out of 100.

While the United States retained the top position, its declining reputation — driven by political instability and governance concerns under President Donald Trump’s second term — signals mounting challenges for U.S. influence. The United Kingdom’s fall to third place underscores stagnation in its business and governance metrics, contrasting with China’s deliberate efforts to enhance its global standing.

Image: Brand Finance

The strategy behind China’s soft power expansion #​

David Haigh, Chairman of Brand Finance, attributes China’s rise to its sustained investments in economic attractiveness, cultural engagement, and governance stability. He points to China’s growing reputation for sustainability, its expanding influence in the luxury and technology sectors, and its positioning as an increasingly trusted international partner.

Although China has been recognized as an economic powerhouse for decades, its ability to shape global culture and consumer behavior remains an open question.

The country’s entertainment sector has made significant strides, evidenced by the box office success of Nezha 2. The animated sequel recently overtook Pixar’s Inside Out 2 to become the highest-grossing animated film globally, earning $1.69 billion. However, over 99% of its revenue came from the domestic market — a stark contrast to the globalized distribution strategy of Hollywood films.

At the same time, Chinese brands in luxury, technology, and e-commerce continue to make international inroads. BYD, now the world’s largest electric vehicle manufacturer, recorded an 83 percent year-over-year increase in overseas sales last month. Beauty brand Florasis has expanded into European markets, while Pinduoduo’s fusion of social networking and e-commerce has been increasingly recognized as an innovative model for online retail.

China’s AI disruption: How DeepSeek is reshaping the market #​

China’s soft power gains are also emerging in the technology sector, where the launch of DeepSeek AI has shaken up U.S. markets. The debut of the cost-efficient AI model triggered a $969 billion selloff in semiconductor and AI infrastructure stocks, signaling a major disruption in the global AI race.

The immediate reaction in financial markets was striking. More than 70% of stocks in the Technology Select Sector ETF (XLK) declined, with Nvidia losing nearly $600 billion in value before rebounding as investors bought the dip. DeepSeek’s success suggests that China is no longer merely catching up in AI innovation — it is actively reshaping the industry’s trajectory.

However, a key challenge is censorship. DeepSeek AI employs multi-layered content moderation, filtering sensitive topics, erasing responses mid-sentence, and retrospectively reviewing answers for compliance. While this aligns with China’s regulatory framework, it also raises concerns about the AI model’s international adoption.

What China’s soft power means for global luxury, culture #​

Luxury brands must also consider the broader implications of China’s soft power expansion. With global influence increasingly dictated by digital ecosystems, entertainment, and sustainability narratives, Western luxury houses may need to rethink their approach.

For decades, Hollywood, French fashion, and European heritage brands have maintained uncontested cultural dominance. Now, China is closing the gap, driven by homegrown brands expanding overseas, the success of domestic films, and advancements in AI-driven consumer engagement.

Yet, the question remains: can Chinese luxury and cultural brands transcend their domestic success to achieve true global influence? The record-breaking box office of Nezha 2 is a milestone, but the challenge remains whether Chinese entertainment and fashion can scale globally in the same way Hollywood and European maisons have.

Who’s gaining and who’s losing in soft power? #​

Despite China’s rise, the U.S. continues to lead the Global Soft Power Index, ranking high in Familiarity, Influence, and Business & Trade. But its governance rankings have slipped, reflecting growing political instability and economic unpredictability. The United Arab Emirates maintained its 10th position, bolstered by business-friendly policies and diplomatic influence.

Israel and Ukraine saw sharp declines due to ongoing geopolitical conflicts affecting their global reputation.

What’s next? The future of China’s soft power influence #​

Whether in AI, luxury, or cultural exports, China is no longer simply competing — it is reshaping the global balance of influence. The coming years will reveal whether this momentum translates into lasting power, or if China remains an economic force without full cultural integration.

For brands, investors, and global policymakers, China’s soft power expansion is no longer a future possibility — it is a present reality.

italy should be higher than canada imo