Mr. Shangkong | China, as world's new No 1 economy, still struggles with soft power
As Beijing shifts its economic focus to quality, it needs to learn that soft power can't be bought
It's official now. China is No 1 and America is No 2. I'm talking about which economy is the world's largest.
Last week, the International Monetary Fund confirmed that mainland China's economic output this year should reach US$17.6 trillion, against about US$17.4 trillion for the United States. Beijing, shall we celebrate?
Interestingly, Beijing didn't want to make this a big deal. Instead, Xinhua has published a series of articles in the past few days to urge people to focus more on "quality" of the economy rather than to just continue to play the numbers game. After all, we all know there is no way that the mainland can keep growing its economy at even 7 per cent a year for the next decade without structural reforms on both the economic and political fronts.
Top leaders in Beijing are definitely not stupid, so clearly it's time to change the focus of the game.
I've also noticed another interesting phenomenon - as Beijing is trying to shift its economic focus to quality from quantity, the central government is also becoming increasingly interested in demonstrating its so-called "soft power" to the rest of the world.
Every country wants to put out some propaganda so there's nothing wrong with China promoting itself externally, but Beijing needs better public relations managers to help it, otherwise the effort could backfire.