Kurlantzick is a visiting scholar at the China Program of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. This essay is adapted from his forthcoming book, “Charm Offensive: How China’s Soft Power Is Transforming the World.”
From The Newsweek:
As anti-Americanism grows, China is learning the value of good PR and beating the United States at its own game.
Meanwhile, China’s young, Western-educated and business-savvy diplomats now often display as much local knowledge as their American counterparts, thanks to Foreign Ministry programs that send growing numbers of Chinese envoys to study abroad, as in Mexico. China’s image has also been helped by loosened travel restrictions on its own nationals, which have increased the number of Chinese business people and tourists heading abroad from 12 million in 2001 to 34 million in 2006. These itinerant Chinese spread the image of a worldly country with plenty of money to spend, whether in Parisian boutiques or in new business projects in Africa, Asia or Latin America. [Full Text]
