On Straits Times, Asad Latif, a visiting research fellow at the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies (ISEAS), reviews Charm Offensive: How China’s Soft Power Is Transforming The World by Joshua Kurlantzick:
This book argues starkly that China may become the first nation after the fallen Soviet Union to challenge the United States seriously for control of the world.
The way Beijing would mount the challenge is not by employing its military might against Washington, but by using its economic strengths to spread across the world its soft power: the ability to mould the preferences of other countries without the threat or use of force.
Harvard academic Joseph Nye coined the term ‘soft power’ more than a decade ago to denote a country’s ‘ability to shape the preferences of others’, lead by example and attract other countries to do what it wants.[Full text]
