Author: Joshua Kurlantzick

Publisher: Yale University Press

ISBN: 978-0-300-11703-5

If you are wondering how China has been able to effectively exert their soft power around the world, Joshua Kurlantzick’s Charm Offensive: How China’s Soft Power Is Transforming the World is a good place to start.

Kurlantzick is a Visiting Scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Special Correspondent at the New Republic, and Senior Correspondent at the American Prospect. Many of his articles on Asia and U.S. foreign policy have appeared in Foreign Affairs, The New York Times Magazine, The Washington Post, Harper’s, The Atlantic Monthly and other well-known publications. Much of the observations he writes about are the result of many years of on-the-ground experience while living and traveling in various countries and tracking down China’s policies in Southeast Asia, Latin America, and Africa.

As mentioned in the Preface, Kurlantzick states that the book represents an attempt to close the knowledge gap about China’s soft power and its increasingly sophisticated diplomacy, which has and will transform international relations. He was quite taken aback when a few years ago he started to ask Washington’s policy makers about China’s new global influence- its soft power. The reaction was one of blank stares and even some of these individuals had asked him to brief them about the topic. In other words, while the Americans were asleep at the switch, China was spreading the word around that it was no longer to be perceived as unsophisticated in matters of diplomacy. It was now willing to become involved in aid programs and other ventures where in the past it was the Americans who dominated this terrain.

Using his personal experiences and knowledge, Kurlantzick offers readers an excellent synthesis as to how China began to court the world with its soft power- a term that was invented more than a decade ago by Prof. Nye of Harvard. Quoting from Nye, Kurlantzick describes soft power as resting on the ability “to shape the preferences of others…It is leading by example and attracting others to do what you want. If I can get you to do what I want, then I do not have to use carrots or sticks to make you do it.”

The way in which it can conveyed is through a variety of means such as a country’s popular and elite culture, its public diplomacy such as government funded programs with the intention of influencing public opinion abroad, its businesses’ actions abroad, international perceptions of its government policies and the gravitational pull of a nation’s economic strength. However, as Kurlaznick points out, soft power as it is applicable to China is more than the original concept advanced by Nye, as now it is broader in its scope. China perceives soft power as anything that is outside of the military and security realm and this includes not only popular culture and public diplomacy but also coercive economic and diplomatic levers such as aid and investment as well as participation in multilateral organizations-something that China shied away from in the past.

The book is divided into eleven well-written chapters that illustrate how China has built its global soft power and how it has drastically made over its image in many parts of the world from dangerous to benevolent. Moreover, readers will learn how China uses that power and how nations are responding particularly those whose relations with the United States have been faltering such as Venezuela and others whose leaders display autocratic traits.

It should be mentioned that in the main, Kurlantzick focuses on China’s pursuit of developing nations in Southeast Asia, Africa, Latin America, and Central Asia-areas of the globe that have been alienated in one way or another by the USA. It is here where China succeeds in promoting itself as having an effective model for social and economic success and where it turns a blind eye to the dictatorial shenanigans, even atrocities that are common in these parts of the world.

In his concluding chapter, Kurlantzick makes various suggestions as to how the USA can respond and as he states, it still enjoys crucial advantages over China, particularly with its military power that if used correctly, can compliment soft power. Case in point is its deployment for humanitarian missions such as the tsunami response that demonstrated that only the USA had sophisticated military to move aid overnight.

Kurlantzick should be applauded for this timely book particularly when American foreign policy has suffered several set-backs over the past few years. Although, for some more knowledgeable about the subject matter, the book is hardly terra incognita, however, for the vast majority it very enlightening and certainly an eye-opener.

The above review was contributed by: NORM GOLDMAN: Retired Title Attorney: Editor & Publisher of Bookpleasures. Here are  Norm Goldman's Reviews

 To read Norm's Interview with Josh Kurlantzick CLICK HERE