The definition of hard power, soft power and sharp power and differences between them.
Hard power
Hard power also known as material power. It’s mainly about military and economic ways to influence the political bodies’ behaviour and interests. Its political power is mostly coercion (aggressive). Therefore, it has immediate effect when political body imposed on weaker military and economic power.
Hard power is quantifiable, for example, military strength, economic strength etc. it is a tangible element of national strength and can be used to make comparisons with other countries hard power.
While comparing to soft power, hard power contrasts with diplomacy, culture and history, which basically means soft power.
Soft power
Soft power is mostly about attracting. It’s the ability to be able to understand the point of views of others through attraction and appealing. It co-opts with the peoples instead of coercing them to get the wanted outcome.
A country’s soft power mainly consists of three aspects which are culture, foreign policies and political values. Therefore, its special characteristic is that it’s non-coercive as it values the three aspects.
Some other main points of soft power are that it is non-quantifiable. For example, Korea which has K-pop, Japanese-comics/Doreamon and western countries which has western culture.
Moreover, soft power is an intangible element of the national strength, for example, cultural power, governance(legitimacy) and diplomacy.
Soft power compared with hard power, soft power is totally the opposite as it doesn’t use coercion which means force or money as persuasion.
Sharp power
Sharp power is the mostly about the use of one country’s manipulative diplomatic policies to impact the target country’s political system. Sharp power itself include one country’s attempts to influence and take information from the educational systems and news media of another country, just to mislead the public’s view in a target country. It tries to divert attention so that the negative information about itself can be excused.
Comparing to soft power, sharp power is different as its attractive policies tries to project a better image of the country and tries to promote understanding with other countries, mainly by pursuing other countries and influencing their decisions. While on the other hand, soft power policies are more about cultural and sporting events.
Moreover, sharp power comparing with hard power, hard power is different as it includes compelling other country to take actions or change its decisions by threats, military force and economic sanctions.
B) Summaries of 5 articles. (3 articles of soft power, 2 articles about sharp power)
1)
The first article shows the influence of Chinese culture such as language, history in different continents of Africa. In Africa, many schools have been carrying out a mandarin learning system as well as teaches the history of china to their students in Africa.
Surprisingly in this article, it mentions show many young Africans are learning mandarin for better career prospect in the future. Moreover, by learning the language, many Africans are intrigued to learn more about china’s culture including Chinese movies and history has been becoming popular in African continents.
ANALYSIS
This article shows that the spread of china’s culture is enhancing china’s soft power by making it more recognizable to other continents and by receiving a lot of attention.
2)
The second article is mostly talking about how Bollywood is also getting extremely famous even in china. Because of the success of the Bollywood movies, the people in china has been questioning the china’s entertainment industry and has been comparing Bollywood movies and Chinese movies
Moreover, the article mentions that soft power can only come from free civil society which makes china the focus since china do not practice full openness and democracy which might be hindering their development of soft power.
Lastly, since there are some censorship in the media regarding some issues of china. Thus, it could make it impossible for the entertainment crew to make something which do not harm the reputation of china in any way.
3)
The third article talks about how military expansion and the political values (such as human rights, equality ,etc.) could lead to a decline in soft power and how it affects the western audience image of china.
However, it has made good effort in promoting in the fields of education, technology, etc
The source mentions how china development of soft power has been a straight line for a long period of time even though it increased slightly in soft power it still wasn’t a significant change.
4)
The fourth article is related to the sharp power of China. China as the “rising power that challenges a compelling one which usually leads to war”. The article pointed out that China’s influence on other countries mainly on the west has become more intimidating and encompassing. Many countries have got to know about China’s actions on how China is trying to intervene into other countries politics, universities and publishing. moreover , China has even tried to groom other countries politicians and bureaucrats. As many countries are concerned about China not only trying to get foreign lands but also conquer foreign minds, so countries are trying to find a middle ground where they can have a agreement with China. They can’t just throw barricades as China is a part of the world economy and on top of that there is a shortage in statesmanship.
5)
The fifth article that I read was about the Sharp power of China. It showed how China’s sharp power was growing instantly due to several attempts of China to make its image better of how the world should see it. This article showed how China had adopted different ways to make the criticism of its politics quiet down and to stop the discussions about sensitive topics such as Tiananmen Square protests.. Few ways were rejecting visas of critical journalists and academics, giving hard time to insensitive governments and firms and even going beyond its borders by keeping an eye on the ethnic Chinese living outside China. China also used economic aspect to make a better reputation such as by investing huge sums outside its borders.Moreover, this article pointed out the three characteristics of China’s sharp power which were leaving behind no proof that any of the work was related to the Chinese state, keeping strict control on itself which we can also say self-censorship and spreading widely all across the world.
On the other hand, the article showed the concerns of different countries such as Australia, Britain, Canada, New Zealand, Germany and etc regarding the intervention of China in their countries, aiming to manipulate and censor topics plus to apply propaganda controls on the America media.