Joseph Nye: Immigration, Soft Power and Sino-American relations in the new period

　　BY ZHANG MEI

　　Mei Zhang: Dear Prof. Joseph Nye, thank you for accepting my interview. Immigration is a sensitive social issue in many countries, but it may avoid demographic decline in the United States. What do think of overseas Chinese in the United States? Could you please tell me about the roles that overseas Chinese could play to enhance china’s soft power?

　　Joseph Nye: I think the US is benefited enormously from immigration. It is a country of immigration. Unlike China, which has a long traditional culture, is mostly the Han People. US is a country which reflects many different national origins and I think that actually increases the strength of the United States. Among the various people who come to the United States and contribute it, I would say Chinese were very important. It’s interesting if you look at some of the entrepreneurship in Silicon Valley, many starters of the companies were from Indian-Americans and Chinese-Americans. So I think Overseas Chinese are the part of this increase in America’s soft power. And as they continue to keep ties and serve the communication back home, they can also help China’s soft power. And many people will get to know more about China and Chinese culture by making friends and contacting with Chinese-Americans or Chinese who immigrate into America.

　　Mei Zhang: As the representative of the neo-liberal School of international relations, you first proposed the concept of soft power. As far as I know, the reason why you put forward this concept was inspired by E.H.Carr and Susan Strange. Can you tell me what the difference is between soft power and structural power or power over opinion?

　　Joseph Nye: Well, soft power, in my definition, is the ability to affect others, to get what you want without coercion or payment, and it was influenced, as you say, by E.H.Carr and Susan Strange, but it differs from their concepts. Susan Strange, when she wrote about structural power, was referring to ways which countries can accept the agenda of international politics, and that’s a part of soft power, but it’s only part. For me, soft power includes the ability to set the agendas but also includes the capacity to persuade and to attract. Those are not necessarily part of Susan’s structural power. E.H.Carr is little bit closer to the sense. What he wrote was that there are three forms of power: military power, economic power, and ideas. So that the way he use power of ideas is somewhat closer to my soft power, but the soft power concept, as I use it, includes agenda setting, which is not necessarily just a question of ideas since Carr was using the terms. So the similarities to both Carr and Strange, but the way I’ve defined it, most recently Chapter four of my book Future Power, which show you where the differences between my definition and Carr and Strange uses that referring to.

　　Mei Zhang: You know, when it comes to hard power, it is easy to measure and compare between different countries, we may count the number of ships or planes a country has, but it seems very difficult to talk about soft power. There are two ways to measure and compare the soft power of different countries: One is public opinion survey, which is very popular in the United States; the other is a comparative study. In your book, I saw you had a large span of comparative study on the soft power of Japan, China, Russia, the European Union and other countries. So I want to ask, how do you use these two methods in your study? In my opinion, both polls and comparative studies are established on the basis of different historical tradition, in fact, people of different values for the evaluation of the same country is often far from. Do you think you can set up a world standard to measure soft power of different countries?

　　Joseph Nye: Well, even with hard power, one has to realize that it’s easier to measure power resources than to measure power outcomes. I used an example in my book that compared the military power resources of countries, for example how many planes or ships or tanks they have, but that may not tell you the outcome of the battle, and that depends very much on contacts. So the United States has many more tanks than Vietnam had, yet the United Sates lost the Vietnam War. So measuring power resources gives you a probability of power as outcomes, but it’s not a sure measure power of outcomes. So the same thing is true with soft power, you can look at the power of the resources of different countries, but that won’t tell you the very odds of the outcomes. For example, there is a recent study that was by a consultancy in London called Portland, called Soft power thirty and the soft power thirty rank what they thought top thirty countries in terms of soft power. They use a lot of measurements of resources, number of foreign students, entertainment industry and so on. These are power resources but they don’t necessarily tell you the power outcomes in particular situations. Public opinion polls come a little more accurate because they tell you whether one country with its resources is attractive as measured by answers to public opinion polls. There you can use votes by refutable conversations like BBC so that you can compare countries, but even if a country may be popular, it doesn’t necessarily say that it would be persuasive in a particular case, just like the number of tanks didn’t tell you whether in terms of hard power the United Stated or Vietnam would win the Vietnam war. So in that sense I think you can make estimates of the power resources of different counties in terms of soft power. This supported soft power thirty is a good example but it is not the same as a definitive retell which telling you which country is the most attractive. So I think you can make comparison with China, Japan, Russia, the European Union and so on. That’s what this Portland study does, but it still has some problems in the sense that you measuring resources rather than outcomes. For outcomes you probably have to look at case studies in particular contacts.

　　Mei Zhang: So far, the concept of soft power has been 25 years. In the past decades, hundreds of essays and scholarly articles have been published in the People’s Republic of China on soft power. The term has also entered China’s official language. In his keynote address to 17th national congress of the Communist Party of China on October 15th, 2007, President Hu Jintao stated that the CPC must enhance culture as part of the soft power of our country. In 2013, President Xi Jinping also emphasized that the CPC must enhance national cultural soft power, because this is related to the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation and China dream. Could you please tell me about the importance of soft power for China and the current situation of China’s soft power? The Portland Group, a London consultancy, has just issued a report called the Soft Power 30, it is interesting that China came in #30 behind Japan, Korea and Singapore in Asia. What do you think about it?

　　Joseph Nye: I think China’s emphasis on developing soft power is very smart strategy for China, because if a country’s hard power increases dramatically as China has increased, both its economic power and its military power, it’s likely to frighten its neighbors and they will form co-relations to stop China’s development, but if the country can at the same time increase its soft power or attractiveness, then it looks less frightening and that means the co-relations that they formed to against it will be less effective. So in that sense I think that when Hu Jintao raised this in 2007, it was a very smart strategy. I think the problem that China has faced is that in terms of increasing its soft power has a reason why it ranks thirty of this Portland index. It has to do with two things. One is a lot of countries’ soft power is provided or created by civil society. China controls over civil society, which means you don’t have the same freedom in the cultural movements that you have in Britain, which came first in the ranking by Portland or Germany or the US support. A lot of the American soft power comes not from the government but from the universities and entertainment industry support. The other limit is in terms of your own neighborhood, where you say, Japan, Korea, and Singapore which came in highly rank. If you look at China’s disputed territory claims with Japan, Vietnam, Philippines, India, these are all things that makes China less attractive.  

　　Mei Zhang: In fact, since the implementation of reform and opening up policy, the political, economic, and social development of china has rapidly improved. Not only hard power but also soft power have been greatly enhanced. It is said that the 21st century is the century of China. What do you think of the contrast between China’s soft power and the United States’ soft power?

　　Joseph Nye: I think China has gained a great deal of soft power through its extremely successful economic development. China has raised hundreds of millions of people out of poverty, that’s greatly admired and many people are attracted by that and that depends on China’s soft power. So I think in that sense China does have soft power, both for its performance economically as well as its traditional culture. China’s traditional culture is again very attractive. So I think these are sources of soft power for China. I don’t personally believe that the 21^st century is the century for China. I think that is too simple of proposition. I think in terms of both hard power and soft power I would expect the United States would be more powerful than China, but I expect China’s soft power is likely to continue to increase.

　　Mei Zhang: As far as I know, you have put forward the concept of Smart Power on the basis of the concept of soft power. Smart power is the combination of hard and soft power resources into a successful strategy. Why does the United States want to promote Smart Power? 

　　Joseph Nye: Power is the ability to affect the others, to get the outcomes, and that means using all your power resources, political military and soft power. But you need to use them in ways that reinforce each other. Sometimes the types of power can undercut each other, for example, what the United States did in Iraq in 2003 without a UN resolution. The hard power was successful but it undercut American soft power. So that was not a smart power decision. So my argument of smart power is control or use of hard power. You have to ask what you are willing to do with your soft power and that situation where they reinforce each other, which is why I call it smart power. I mentioned earlier that I think that when China, in 2007, said it was going to invest in its soft power, that was smart power, because China’s hard power was increasing by increasing the attractiveness in China. You could make the hard power and soft power reinforce each other. So I think smart power is very important for China’s influence international affairs to increase.

　　Mei Zhang: How to use smart power to influence international affairs for China?

　　Joseph Nye: I think the fact is that if China combines its growing hard power economic and military with soft power, then I think that can enhance its smart power, because soft power can reinforce the hard power, and I think it can increase its smart power.

　　Mei Zhang: Recently, the international community has responded positively to the Chinese government’s political, economic and diplomatic policies, what do you think of the new Chinese leaders’ new policies to enhance the country’s soft power? Could you please tell me about the greatest opportunities and challenges that China is facing to enhance soft power?

　　Joseph Nye: Well as I mentioned earlier, I think that Chinese leaders have done a lot to enhance Chinese soft power, particularly the economic success story in China, but also the efforts to promote Chinese culture with Confucius Institute or something like the Shanghai Exposition. These are all very useful ways to increase Chinese soft power. But as I mentioned earlier, I think the limits on China’s soft power are the inability to totally free of civil society because of censorship and also because of territorial disputes. So those are the things that hurt China in terms of enhance the soft power. But the things that helped China have been the economic growth and success traditional culture.

　　Mei Zhang: You know, the topic of the decline of the United States has been talking about a period of time, this year you published your new book named Is the American Century Over? In the book, you compared the United States with the European Union, Japan, Russia, India, Brazil, China and ancient Rome. In your opinion, the United States does not really decline? As far as I know, hegemony is impossible, but cooperation is feasible and necessary. What do you think of the future of the world order?

　　Joseph Nye: I think you are correct that hegemony is not possible. No country is able to fully control the world. You will also find that there are many areas where China and US and other countries have common interests which are not zero-sum, if you look at climate change or dealing with financial stability or dealing with terrorism, or handling pandemics healthcare. These are all cases where unique cooperation upon countries to be able to deal with them. No country can solve the problems by itself. So that’s why it doesn’t make much sense talking about hegemony. When I say the American century is not over in my book, I do compare to the fact that the United States is less able to manage some of these problems by itself, it is going to have to work or cooperate with other countries, including China, which is increasingly important to the world economy. So in terms of future world order, I think a great deal will depend on the ability of US and China and other large countries or economics like European Union, India, Japan to work together.

　　Mei Zhang: How do you evaluate the current Sino-American relations? Can we say that current Sino-American bilateral relations are at the most important moment after President Xi Jinping’s visiting? What are your expectations for the future development of Sino-American relations?

　　Joseph Nye: I tend to be relatively optimistic about Sino-American relations in long run. China doesn’t pose existential treat to the United States, and the United States doesn’t pose existential treat to China, so while we have differences, and some of those differences are important, for example question freedom navigation of south China sea is current problem where we have differences, but we also have very large areas of overlapping interests and cooperation of the economy, but I mentioned others like anti-terrorism, climate change or dealing with pandemics, so I think the areas where we gain from the cooperation are the areas where we have zero-sum political competition, so the key question about the future development of Sino-American relations will be can we develop of trust and frequently contacts that we keep cooperate areas of our political agenda road instead of competitive areas.