Building National Cohesion and Domestic Legitimacy: A Regime Security Approach to Soft Power in China
| Author | Kingsley Edney |
| Date | 01 November 2015 |
| DOI | 10.1111/1467-9256.12096 |
| Published date | 01 November 2015 |
| Subject Matter | Article |
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P O L I T I C S : 2 0 1 5 V O L 3 5 ( 3 - 4 ) , 2 5 9 – 2 7 2
doi: 10.1111/1467-9256.12096
Building National Cohesion and Domestic
Legitimacy: A Regime Security Approach to
Soft Power in China
Kingsley Edney
University of Leeds
Studies of Chinese soft power have emphasized its potential to ameliorate the security dilemma and help China
achieve a ‘peaceful rise’. While this perspective is useful, it overlooks an important alternative Chinese
interpretation of soft power as a response to domestic security challenges. In order to address this omission, this
article uses a regime security approach to examine soft power in the Chinese context. Through an investigation
of the Chinese concept of ‘cultural security’ the article reveals that Chinese analysts view soft power as having
the potential to help the Chinese Communist Party solve an internal security predicament by enhancing regime
legitimacy and national cohesion.
Keywords: soft power; China; regime security; cultural security; national cohesion
Soft power, or ‘the ability to affect others through the co-optive means of framing the
agenda, persuading and eliciting positive attraction in order to obtain preferred outcomes’
(Nye, 2011, pp. 20–21), is a popular concept in China. The term has been embraced by
China’s leaders and is now part of the official lexicon of the Chinese Communist Party
(CCP). China’s soft power strategy appears to involve a number of elements, including
promoting ‘mega-events’ and cultural exchanges, developing a stronger international media
presence, pursuing foreign policies designed to improve its image as a responsible power,
promoting Chinese culture abroad and, at times, drawing on the positive attention China’s
economic success has attracted internationally (see Zhang, 2012, pp. 623–626). Chinese
officials appear to be most comfortable discussing soft power strategy in the context of
culture, however, and often employ the term ‘cultural soft power’. The CCP’s recent cultural
reform policies, which it claims are necessary to achieve what Chinese President Xi Jinping
has called the ‘China Dream’ of the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation, are in part
motivated by the desire to increase soft power (see CCP Central Committee, 2011). Indeed,
Xi Jinping’s China Dream discourse is intimately related to China’s quest for soft power (see
Callahan, 2015).
At the same time, the topic of soft power has attracted a great deal of attention from scholars
studying China’s international relations. Some researchers have attempted broad assessments
of the strengths and weaknesses of China’s soft power (Cho and Jeong, 2008; Ding, 2008; Gill
and Huang, 2006; Huang and Ding, 2006). Others have examined the intellectual history of
the concept in China and explain how it has been reinterpreted (Glaser and Murphy, 2009;
Li, 2009) or its relationship with other Chinese ideas about foreign relations, such as public
diplomacy (Wang, 2008) or foreign propaganda (Edney, 2012). Some have examined case
studies of Chinese soft power policy areas or initiatives (Ding and Saunders, 2006; Paradise,
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K I N G S L E Y E D N E Y
2009) or soft power’s impact on China’s bilateral or regional relations (Hall and Smith, 2013;
Shen and Taylor, 2012).
Amid this proliferation of research into Chinese soft power a common consensus has
emerged that the major objective of China’s soft power strategy is to ameliorate the security
dilemma generated by China’s rising power. Soft power in this view is a means by which
China can achieve a ‘peaceful rise’ and reduce the kind of international fear, particularly in
the US and in China’s regional neighbors, that might trigger containment or balancing
behavior. This approach is useful because it highlights an important reason why the concept
has been embraced by the Chinese leadership even more than in its intellectual home of the
US. By focusing on foreign policy and emphasizing the security dilemma, however, this
national security approach overlooks the relationship between soft power and the CCP’s
regime security. Although previous studies have noted that in China soft power has a
relevance to domestic politics that is not present in Nye’s original formulation of the concept
(Barr, 2012, p. 82; Glaser and Murphy, 2009, p. 20; Li, 2009, p. 28) and scholars have
pointed out serious domestic weaknesses that undermine China’s soft power strategy – such
as governance problems, instability and the regime’s lack of legitimacy (e.g. Deng, 2009, p.
73; Wang and Lu, 2008, p. 430) – the relationship between regime security and soft power
in China is yet to be explored. This article aims to address this omission and in doing so
contributes toward building a more complete view of the sources of insecurity shaping
China’s approach to soft power than is provided by a sole focus on national security and the
security dilemma.
The article begins by defining ‘regime security’ and explaining the conceptual relationship
between soft power and regime security, with particular reference to legitimacy and national
cohesion in China. It then examines the discourse of ‘cultural security’ (wenhua anquan) in
China to demonstrate that Chinese analysts are indeed applying the concept of soft power not
only to national security, but also to regime security concerns. In particular, the way that soft
power has been applied to the realm of cultural security in China problematizes Nye’s claim
that American and Chinese soft power can be mutually reinforcing (Nye, 2011, p. 90; 2013;
2014, p. 22; Nye and Wang, 2009, p. 22). The conclusion emphasizes the importance of taking
regime security into account when investigating soft power beyond the liberal democratic
West.
National security, regime security and soft power
The need to overcome the security dilemma by reducing the fear its rise provokes in others is
one of China’s most complex national security challenges and the most widely cited reason for
the country wanting to increase its soft power. According to Li (2009, p. 31), soft power is
‘primarily utilized to refute the “China threat” thesis, facilitate a better understanding of
China’s domestic socio-economic reality, and persuade the outside world to accept and
support China’s rise’. Deng (2009, p. 64) argues that in China the concept of soft power ‘to
a large extent, means the ability to influence others in world politics with the goal of achieving
great power status without sparking fully fledged traditional power politics of hostile balanc-
ing or war’. In his analysis of the concept’s role in China’s rise, Ding (2010, p. 266) argues that
the country’s soft power strategy is one of reassurance that helps ‘to deal with foreign
challenges and create a friendly international environment’. Rawnsley (2012, p. 126) notes
that China’s soft power strategy has been prompted by the emergence of a ‘China threat’
discourse in the West and therefore China’s soft power can be seen as ‘not only reactive, but
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defensive’. Nye also claims that its soft power strategy is intended ‘to make its hard power look
less threatening to its neighbors’ and that soft power can help to reduce the effectiveness of
regional coalitions that attempt to balance against China (Nye, 2011, p. 23; 2013). This kind
of national security perspective helps explain why building soft power has become such an
important task for the CCP. But we need to consider the possibility that domestic concerns
over regime security are also driving China’s soft power project.
‘Regime security’ generally refers to ‘the condition where governing elites are secure from
violent challenges to their rule’ (Jackson, 2010, p. 187). In China’s case, however, the
insecurity of the regime is generated by the possibility not only of violent challenges, but also
of ‘peaceful evolution’ (heping yanbian), which is an extremely seriously concern for the CCP,
particularly following the ‘color revolutions’ that have occurred in some post-Soviet states
(see Shambaugh, 2008, pp. 88–89). The ‘regime’ can be defined as ‘the small state of persons
who hold the highest offices ... and/or are the elite that effectively command the machinery,
especially the coercive forces, of the state’ (Job, 1992, p. 15). While this article uses the term
‘regime security’ rather than ‘state security’, it should be noted that there is often no clear
dividing line between the two within a ‘state-embedded polity’ (Gilley, 2006, p. 501) such as
China, where there is significant penetration of the state by the CCP. Despite China’s successes
in dealing with many of the common sources of insecurity for developing states, such as
permeability by external actors and susceptibility to armed conflict (see Ayoob, 1995, p. 15),
two important sources of regime insecurity remain problematic for the authorities: lack of
legitimacy and lack of national cohesion.
For a political authority such as the CCP, legitimacy is determined by the degree to which it
‘holds and exercises political power with legality, justification and consent from the stand-
point of all of its citizens’ (Gilley, 2009, p. 11). In other words, the use of power must proceed
according to rules, these rules are justified by widely shared beliefs and the actions of those
in...
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