Asia Times reviews Charm Offensive: How China’s Soft Power is Transforming the World by Joshua Kurlantzick:
Joshua Kurlantzick’s new book Charm Offensive: How China’s Soft Power Is Transforming the World is a balanced and elegant application of Nye’s concept of soft power to the question of how China is engaging the world.
Kurlantzick’s analysis manages to avoid the fallacies common in a number of recent books on China. He acknowledges the risks of China’s rise with illustrations that show he clearly appreciates the potential complications as the interests of China and the United States competitively overlap.
But Kurlantzick also acknowledges the positive changes China and its leaders have made; in fact, at times when he illustrates how the country is employing soft power in its favor, the reader is left with the sense that Kurlantzick appreciates the thought behind such exercises. [Full text]
