Great Leap Outward

China’s “soft power” could take on a whole new dimension in 2009 writes Willy Lam.

The top priorities of the Hu Jintao administration for 2009 are apparently to to bao-ba – Chinese shorthand for safeguarding an 8 percent growth rate – and to create as many as 30 million new jobs so as to head off social unrest. Despite these economic uncertainties, however, the Chinese Communist Party leadership is mapping out multi-pronged strategies to boost the global profile of this fast-emerging quasi-superpower. These include the aggressive worldwide projection of both hard and soft power.

The People’s Liberation Army started the new year by dispatching three sophisticated naval vessels to the Gulf of Aden to protect ships, including those from Taiwan and Hong Kong, that are being threatened by Somali pirates. Military authorities have also admitted that naval shipyards are building China’s first aircraft carrier, which could become operational by 2015. Plans are also afoot for a gargantuan military parade on October 1 to mark the 60th anniversary of the founding of the People’s Republic. Dubbed by Beijing insiders as "almost as grand as the Olympics," the show of force in Tiananmen Square will feature the latest domestically manufactured missiles, jet-fighters, and other state-of-the-art hardware.

That China’s hard-power projection will reach the corners of the earth is made clear by a recent article in the official Liberation Army Daily. Entitled “We must transcend territorial concepts in safeguarding national security,” the commentary, by strategist Huang Kunlun, pointed out that the country’s national interests have gone beyond traditional land, sea and air boundaries to include the vast oceans as well as outer space. Huang argued that the PLA must protect China’s national goals and interests – wherever they may be. "Wherever our national interests have extended, so will the mission of our armed forces," Huang wrote. "Given our new historical mission, the forces not only have to safeguard the country’s 'territorial boundaries' but also its 'boundaries of national interests'."

There are also signs that Beijing is making subtle but major revisions of the so-called "peaceful rise" theory, which was advanced by the Hu leadership in 2003 to reassure Asia-Pacific nations that the emerging quasi-superpower would not pose a threat to its neighbours. Official military analysts are now saying that to attain a global status commensurate with China’s comprehensive strength, the PLA should not only seek sophisticated weapons but also be constantly primed for warfare to defend China’s core interests. According to General Zhang Zhaoyin, the PLA must abandon the outdated doctrine of "building a peace-oriented army at a time of peace." Writing in the Liberation Army Daily, General Zhang pointed out that “preparing for battle, fighting wars, and winning wars have always been the fundamental tasks of the army.”

"The PLA must never deviate from the doctrine of being assiduous in preparing for warfare, and seeking to win wars," added Zhang, who is the deputy commander of a Group Army in the Chengdu Military Region. "Army construction must revolve around the core of raising our ability to win wars."

At the same time, CCP authorities are readying what some commentators call a Great Leap Outward for Chinese soft power. Reports by the Hong Kong and Western media in January said Beijing was spending upwards of 40 billion yuan to boost what party insiders call "overseas propaganda." The mammoth CCTV monopoly, the official Xinhua News Agency, and the CCP mouthpiece People’s Daily could each receive up to 15 billion yuan for super-schemes geared toward enhancing China’s international influence. CCTV, which opened French and Spanish channels before last summer’s Beijing Olympics, is expected to offer services in Russian and Arabic later this year. Xinhua, which has news bureaus in dozens of major cities around the globe, is reportedly planning to establish a 24-hour English news channel to compete with CNN and BBC. The Global Times, which is an offshoot of People’s Daily, is readying an English edition in the near future. This would become China’s third English-language newspaper.  

CCP Politburo Standing Committee member Li Changchun told officials attending a recent conference on propaganda and ideology that they must "vigorously sing the praises of the achievements of the CCP, socialism, the reform policy, and [the glories of] the great motherland." Li called for "assiduous efforts to augment the soft power of Chinese culture, and to further elevate our national image." Wang Chen, who heads the party’s overseas propaganda division, added that media and cultural units should beef up their "capacity to broadcast, to positively influence international public opinion and to establish a good image for our nation."

"We must strive to set up a top-line global media arm that covers the entire world and which is multi-lingual, enjoys a large viewership, has a large volume of information and is strongly influential," Wang indicated.

Many China watchers believe the CCP leadership is exploiting the precipitous drop in the reputation of "laissez-faire American-style capitalism" – which is apparently responsible for the global financial crisis – to make propaganda for Chinese norms and values, especially the "China model" of economic development in the absence of political liberalization.

The legacy of the Hu administration, not to mention China’s aspiration for quasi-superpower status, will rest on the outcome of the country’s unprecedented leap outward this year.