Beijing's 'soft' touch in Southeast Asia
India's late prime minister P.V. Narasimha Rao would point out during his Southeast Asian travels that the simha in his name meant 'lion'. That may have impressed Singapore's mainly Chinese audiences, but the Thai reaction was, to use a colloquialism, that grandmothers did not have to be taught how to suck eggs. Other Southeast Asians also resented reminders of their Sanskritic past.
That instructive reaction exposed the limitations of the new kind of power projection - 'soft power' - with which Joseph Nye, the Harvard University political scientist, captured the imagination of idealists. Things might have been different if Rao's India had boasted today's booming growth and a nuclear arsenal. In the hard world of realpolitik, soft power is most persuasive as the velvet glove over the mailed fist; a charm offensive is effective as the advanced guard of waiting divisions.
Professor Nye defined soft power as 'the ability to get what you want through attraction rather than coercion or payments ... Soft power arises from the attractiveness of a country's culture, political ideals and policies'.
Thus, soft power is the ultimate in diplomacy. Yet, Rao's efforts to build bridges of understanding were not conspicuously successful. This must be contrasted with the success of mainland China's charm offensive. Peaceful Chinese initiatives in Southeast Asia have been expanding ever since Deng Xiaoping stopped exporting revolution: major public buildings in East Timor, roads in Myanmar, more aid for the Philippines and Cambodia than they receive from Japan or the United States, and the prospect of a free-trade area mark Beijing's soft power and charm offensive.
Yet, it may not be too cynical to suggest that power is never soft. The US undoubtedly exerts the greatest soft power because it does not have to spend anything on attracting people to its culture. But the hidden persuaders of the multibillion-dollar American cultural industry do not flourish in isolation from the military-industrial complex that is the basis of American power. The 'American Dream' is so alluring because it holds out the promise of a share of the superpower's idyll.
China does not similarly offer absorption. But a country whose industrial output rose 18 per cent last month promises appealing commercial possibilities.
Another factor is what has been called China's 'creeping assertiveness' - reflected in its action in the Paracel and Spratly islands, and its refusal to endorse Asean's Code of Conduct for the South China Sea.
However, China's charm offensive mitigates the adverse impact of unilateral action in territorial disputes: its announced intention to explore the riches of the South China Sea, including areas claimed by others, for the benefit of all members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations.
Soft power, then, is not a substitute for force majeure, but a useful adjunct suited to the ethos of the age of the spin doctor.
Sunanda Kisor Datta-Ray is a former editor of The Statesman in India
