Joseph Nye: soft power can benefit both China and the US
April 28 , 2023
On April 28th, Professor Joseph Nye’s new book, Soft Power and Great-Power Competition: Shifting Sands in the Balance of Power between the United States and China, published by Springer Nature and CITIC Press, was released at CCG. The book is another heavyweight work in the “China and Globalization” series edited by CCG During the event, Professor Joseph Nye expressed the following views:
Well, thank you very much. First, I want to start by thanking Wang Huiyao and people at Springer and CITIC for the wonderful job they’ve done in preparing this book. And I’m grateful to the opportunity to able to enable my ideas to reach many people, both in Chinese and in English. So I’ll start with that expression of gratitude.
In terms of the topic of the book, and the situation in the world today, I’ve quite worried about the conditions of US-China relations. I’m afraid that, as I said, it’s a cooperative rivalry, but there’s too much emphasis on the rivalry and not enough on the cooperation. And that’s where the point about soft power comes in, which is, soft power is the ability to get what you want through attraction, rather than coercion or payment. And soft power can be something which can benefit both China and the US at the same time. There can be obviously a competitive dimension of soft power, but there is also a positive joint gain dimension. Some years ago, Wang Jisi of Peking University and I, who authored an article on US and Chinese soft power, in which we pointed out that if the US becomes more attractive in the eyes of China, and China becomes more attractive in the eyes of the US, it’s going to make it better able to cooperate. And the need for cooperation is truly great.
Not only do we have, as mentioned earlier, a great deal of economic interdependence between our countries, from which both countries benefit, but there is, in addition to that, ecological interdependence in which we cannot escape the effects that each other are having on things such as the global climate or pandemics. Take the question of climate change. This can do enormous damage to both of our countries. If, for example, climate change continues on the path that it’s now on, you will see situations where we may not be able to meet the “1.5℃” goal, which was agreed upon the United Nations and 2015 in Paris. And we may not even make the goal of “2℃”. In that case, what you’re going to see is accelerated melting of Arctic, Antarctic ice caps. With that, sea-level rises that will have a strong impact on for example, American coastal cities, or low line states like Florida or Louisiana. So the costs of dealing with this are quite high, and the interest the United States has in trying to slow climate change is very strong. But the same is true for China. China has a dependence upon waters that come from the Himalayas, in terms of rivers, which they were to dry up, would be devastating. But also, if you look at Western China, and similarly in the Western United States, there’s the danger of droughts, which will greatly affect agriculture production. And you will see a situation where China suffers greatly. Now, the reason that’s important or interesting is that the United States and China, the two of us together, put about 40% of the world’s carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. So it does no good, for example, for China to cut down on its carbon dioxide production if the US doesn’t do so. And it doesn’t do any good for the US to cut down on its carbon dioxide production if China doesn’t do so. So, there is a strong case for cooperation here, because if we don’t cooperate, we’re each going to be hurt.
A similar case can be brought and made for cooperation in global health. Pandemics, such as we’ve just suffered in both countries, in the form of Covid do not respect national boundaries, and yet they can kill millions of people. In that sense, being able to cooperate in the early detection and the scientific understanding of cooperation in dealing with pandemics is very important. And there I would argue that cooperation has been diminishing. If we go back to the early 2000s with the SARS, there was a great deal of cooperation between the US and China. When we look at the Covid example, the cooperation has been minimal and decreasing. That’s bad for the US and China. So, in that sense, as we look at the prospects that the two countries face, we have a strong interest in cooperation. As we heard, ecological cooperation or ecological interdependence have no boundaries, and therefore they have strong incentives cooperation. Unfortunately, cooperation is limited behind the intensity of the great power competition, and that means it’s very difficult for us to accomplish what we need to accomplish. Another way of thinking about that is if we don’t find a way to increase our cooperation, we both will suffer. And that’s where soft power comes in. If we have a situation where China is unattractive in the US, and American politicians demonize China, and the US is unattractive in China, and China demonize the United States, then we essentially remove the soft power that allows us to improve our cooperation. That is the cost for both of us.
So, in that sense, what the book is about of soft power and great power competition, and there will be great power competition. But it has to be seen in this broader perspective of world, which has become much more interdependent. We cannot have a new Cold War, because these two countries cannot afford, either in economic interdependence or ecological interdependence, to pay the costs that would be involved in such a Cold War, not to mention the political and military dangers that accompany it. So that’s an argument for seeing what we can do to increase soft power of China in the US and the US in China. Unfortunately, right now, the trends are running in the wrong direction. I hope, perhaps with the publication of these essays, which may clear the importance of soft power, even in an age of great power competition, that we yet broader understanding of what are the tasks that we face, and how we can go back about accomplishing that. So, thank you to all for making it possible to bring these thoughts to a broad audience and to sit in and to Springer. And I hope that maybe the book will have some positive influence on developing that type of cooperation which I referred to.
Note: The above text is the output of transcribing from an audio recording. It is posted as a reference for the discussion.
