To lead, China must learn how to win friends and stop coming across as a bully

As the Sweden example shows, Beijing’s way of dealing with criticism is eroding its soft power. China needs to avoid alienating others and learn how to influence people if it is to cement its place at the top

Sam Olsen

Published: 1:30am, 22 Dec 2020

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It is often said that Beijing political elites are encouraged to read the works of the great thinkers of the West. The theory is that reading Alexis de Tocqueville and Thucydides will allow an insight into the Western mind that will be useful in replicating the West’s global success.

One slightly less highbrow tome they might want to put on the reading list is Dale Carnegie’s 1936 classic How to Win Friends and Influence People. The original self-help book has some advice for countries wanting to win over the world, with tips that include “how to change people without giving offence”, “the only way to get the best of an argument is to avoid it”, and “make the other person happy about doing the thing you suggest”.

That might all be useful instruction for a country that is, rightly or wrongly, increasingly being seen as an international bully.

In many ways, China has had a good pandemic. It has shown that its system is robust enough to deal with the shock, and its economy is on track to be one of the few worldwide to end 2020 in the black.

It has been a different story for the country’s soft power, however. At the start of the Covid-19 emergency, Beijing made a concerted effort to sway global opinion with its “mask diplomacy”, dispatching planeloads of medical supplies and professionals to all corners of the Earth to show that it could be a responsible citizen – and leader – of the world.

04:45

China’s most-senior diplomats, Wang and Yang, conclude back-to-back visits to Europe

These efforts, though, have been undermined by some of the other headlines that China has generated this year, particularly in the West. “Wolf warrior diplomacy”, which sees Chinese diplomats get tough with foreign criticism of the country, might be popular at home. Abroad, however, it is alienating many countries that it wants to become close to.

Take the way China has treated Sweden. The country may be the biggest in Scandinavia, but it is a minnow in comparison with the People’s Republic. China has 21 times the area, 25 times the gross domestic product, and 135 times the population. If Sweden were a city in China, it would only be the 14th largest in terms of population, behind Shenzhen, Wuhan and the equally snowy Harbin.

There are two sides to every story, of course, but from a Swedish point of view, the past five years has seen China trying to push the nation around.

First, there was the incident with the Kiruna space station, high up in the country’s Arctic region. When China broke ground on the facility in 2014, it was understood by Stockholm that it would be solely for civilian use.

From Singapore to Sweden, China’s influence campaign is backfiring

Only when articles started appearing in China discussing the military’s role did anyone in Sweden suspect that it might be a dual-purpose civil-military station. Sweden, true to the rule of law, did not respond as others might have done by rescinding the contract – at least, not right away.

This was not the first time that Sweden had considered its interests and sovereignty infringed upon by China. Gui Minhai, one of the five Causeway Bay booksellers arrested by the Chinese authorities in 2015, held Swedish nationality. This did not stop him from apparently being seized while on holiday in Thailand.

Nor did it prevent him from later being taken off a train to Beijing while being escorted by two Swedish diplomats, and then imprisoned for 10 years for what Amnesty International called “completely unsubstantiated” charges.

Not surprisingly, none of this has gone down well in Sweden, a historically tolerant nation with a positive view of the world. China’s attitude has had “consequences”, to use a word that wolf warrior diplomats like to throw around. Stockholm has banned Huawei Technologies Co and ZTE Corp from taking part in its 5G networks.

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China's ‘wolf warrior’ diplomacy counterproductive, says former Australian PM Turnbull

Sweden’s state-owned space company, stung by what it considers to have been subterfuge in the original arrangement, has finally confirmed that it will no longer renew contracts with China or accept new Chinese business, because of “changes in geopolitics”.

Research by the Pew Research Centre earlier this year revealed that China is becoming increasingly unpopular in many parts of the world, a sign that the country’s new no-holds-barred approach to diplomacy is having a negative effect. Nowhere has this been more apparent than in traditionally relaxed Sweden: a poll last year revealed that Swedes hold more unfavourable views of China than any other country, aside from Japan.

None of this is good news for China’s long-term international aims. Beijing has plenty it can offer the world, even to advanced nations such as Sweden. But being seen as bullying is no way to bring them willingly onside.

China’s attitude to Sweden is summed up by its ambassador there, Gui Congyou, who used the analogy of a 48kg (105lb) boxer (Swedish media that he said was making denigrating statements about his country) squaring up to an 86kg (189lb) fighter (China). The message was clear: you can annoy us, but we can clobber you.

While popularity alone cannot secure long-term influence, alienating countries with what they perceive to be threats is not the way to prove a country’s global leadership qualities.

China fully understands that it needs to boost its soft power to achieve its ultimate aim of total rejuvenation. Trust and respect are two fundamental pillars of this soft power and, although there will be many in China who deny it, it is clear that these pillars are being chipped away by Beijing’s way of dealing with criticism.

China needs to learn how to win friends and influence people if it is to cement its place at the top.

Sam Olsen is the co-founder of the strategic consultancy MetisAsia and the author of What China Wants