Diplomacy used to be simple for Beijing. During the cold war, Chinese leaders could safely count on shared geopolitical interests of other countries in securing good relations. They did not have to take into account ideological differences or economic benefits. When president Richard Nixon landed in Beijing 40 years ago, he did not make the historic visit to expand trade or make China democratic. His objective was pure and simple: ending China's self-imposed isolation and making it part of the West's anti-Soviet alliance.
Since China's economic take-off in the post-cold-war era, the disappearance of the Soviet threat did not make life too difficult for Beijing. Money became the new language of Chinese diplomacy. China could utilise, and has done so very openly, its growing economic clout to shore up its ties with key Western countries.
A pattern has emerged: before an important visit to a Western country by a top Chinese leader, a high-profile purchasing delegation will lead the way and sign tens of billions of dollars in commercial deals. Western leaders will use such occasions to tout the success of their engagement with China while Chinese leaders reconfirm their belief that, for all their rhetoric about democracy, Western politicians care more about money than human rights.
However, based on the rising anti-China sentiment, it appears that even money is losing its magic in burnishing China's image in the capitalist West. Winning the hearts and minds of the West may have become mission impossible for Beijing.
Chinese leaders have recognised this daunting challenge. In recent visits by senior leaders abroad, they have made serious efforts to engage in 'public diplomacy' - until recently a novel concept for Beijing. President Hu Jintao, for example, went to a China- sponsored Confucius Institute in Chicago a year ago when he was on a state visit, high- lighting Beijing's new campaign of projecting its soft power.
On Vice-President Xi Jinping's visit to the United States this week, undoubtedly the most important diplomatic test for China's leader-in-waiting, he is apparently devoting more time to public diplomacy than to high-level dialogue. His itinerary includes a reunion with Iowan farmers whom he befriended more than two decades ago and attendance at a Lakers' basketball game in Los Angeles. Whether such personal efforts by senior Chinese leaders will yield real results is anybody's guess. But nobody should fault them for trying.
To be sure, China's initiative to improve its image abroad consists of a far more comprehensive, if not expensive, public relations campaign. Readers of The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal may find paid full-page supplements of the China Daily, China's official English-language newspaper, advertising China's success. Chinese news agencies are expanding their presence aggressively in the West, hiring a large number of professional staff and leasing expensive office space in desirable locations. (Xinhua, for example, opened its new office in New York City's Times Square in May last year with much fanfare.) China Central Television has plans to increase its overseas staff fivefold by the end of this year. In Washington alone, it has a 60-person bureau.