In 2020, the South Korean film, Parasite won the Academy Award for the best film. The following year the award went to Nomadland, directed by a Chinese native, Chloe Zhao. In 2023, Everything, Everywhere, All at Once, a story about a displaced Chinese migrant in America took out all the major cinematic awards. From being sequestered in foreign language award categories and art house festivals, Asian stories are now breaking into the mainstream.
While the British made Slumdog Millionaire (2008) and the Australian film Lion (2008) had previously achieved some level of success, they were not directed by Asian creatives.[i] Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon, directed by Ang Lee, had won three Oscars and several nominations in 2001, prising open the western door, only for it to close shut again.
With the export success of Asian film, pop music, TV drama, manga and animation over the past two decades, there has been a flood of books, papers, and conference papers discussing soft power. Much of the work has a celebratory feel-good element. This forum has several aims, one of which is to ask if soft power can extend beyond national containers. It also asks: Can it be global, modular and fluid? The forum requires us to consider two different modalities: soft power and cultural soft power.
The recent success of Asian stories, and Asian directors in the west, working with transnational creative teams making edgy critical movies, is I believe, evidence that cultural soft power is already global, modular and fluid. ‘Conventional’ soft power on the other hand, remains contested and variable.
Definitional ambiguity: soft power
The term soft power is mostly used in academic literature and is derived from the formulation proposed by Nye; namely the power to lead and to attract others by the appeal of one’s ideas.[ii] It is a positive sounding concept, often vaguely defined by journalists. Soft power has a different kind of appeal to nationalism than hard power, for instance military or economic power. For the layperson it is simply how a nation is perceived by the world. Do stories reflected in the global media reflect or damage the true values—and myths—of a nation? As well as legacy media, the internet allows actors, sometimes acting on behalf of states, to disseminate misinformation and disinformation. This coercive variant is sometimes referred to as ‘sharp power’.
Soft power, the power to lead or govern without coercion can be dated back thousands of years in Eastern civilisations. In traditional China, the concept of the ‘kingly way’ presupposed that people would be attracted by benign leadership.
When Nye coined the modern term ‘soft power’, the prevailing image of the US was a positive one; liberalism was triumphant over socialism. The title of Nye’s book, ‘Born to Lead’, was a response to a view that US global power was in decline. Nye argued that the new modality of power he described was the glue that bonded US power so strongly. He says that many ‘power relationships depend very much on what the target thinks.’[iii]
The accumulation of soft power, whether it already exists (as values and norms), or is reproduced (in influential cultural productions), has become a desired policy objective in many nation-states.
What constitutes attractiveness, however, is not so clear cut. One’s attraction to ideas (for instance libertarianism, social democracy or benevolent authoritarianism) is often filtered through existing belief systems, political allegiances and worldviews. Moreover, while some cultural DNA is inherited, understandings of identity are socially constructed through media exposure. Effective communication and public relations can accentuate and harvest soft power. Audio-visual culture in particular has played a dynamic role in national identity since the mid-20th century and it is therefore not surprising that successful media and entertainment products are widely cited barometers.[iv]
The Korean Wave is emblematic of cultural soft power. It’s more than just attraction to ideas: it is based in consumption. Other cultural waves (New Wave music, the French New Wave, The Fifth Generation of filmmakers in China) have attracted attention. However, the contemporary expression, appropriated from Nye, has been used by journalists and cultural academics to describe East Asian creativity and its diversified outputs since the turn of the century.
Having cultural soft power in abundance does not necessarily equate with conventional soft power. This year, despite unprecedented success in pop culture exports, South Korea slipped three places to 15th on one global index. China comes in 5th, despite having a relatively weak cultural presence internationally and coming in 2nd last from 180 nations in press freedom behind North Korea. Herein lies the problem and the disconnect between soft power and cultural soft power. When it comes to the business of indexes, soft power has a range of indicators, and box office success of media just does not cut it. The Lowy Asia Cultural Power index, for instance, uses Google mentions of the respective nation, the number of world heritage sites, and the number of cultural exchanges with other countries.
The term soft power has entered the lexicon and therefore we have to treat it with respect. It has jumped from the fields of IR, where it was born, to media and cultural studies. Definitional imprecision across these fields of research, however, doesn’t allow meaningful comparisons. Soft power indexes likewise should be cited with disclaimers with regard to methodology. Cultural soft power, likewise, has become an inflated concept, and is arguably too associated with fan communities and box office returns, and lacking a real sense of power.
Harder soft power
The German art critic Boris Groys writes, ‘Under the conditions of modernity an artwork can be produced and brought to the public in two ways: as a commodity or as a tool of political propaganda.’[v] This statement points to a soft power nexus between diplomacy, trade and statecraft. The former head of the Motion Pictures Association of America (MPAA) in the 1990s, Jack Valenti, actively promoted the diplomatic credentials of American stories while advocating for new markets.
DC superheroes still speak with American accents, espousing liberty, justice, and the American way. Success in the western market remains the global benchmark. South Korea has achieved it by some measure; Japan has a foothold in manga and anime; and China yearns for it.
The Chinese state offers its own versions of soft power (软实力) and cultural soft power (文化软实力). Yan Xuetong has famously depicted what he calls comprehensive state power according to the following formula:
CP = (M + E + C) × P[vi]
M, E and C are military, economic and cultural power respectively, but they are all components of political power which is preeminent. In recent years the Chinese leadership has activated a concept called ‘cultural confidence’ (文化自信), an internally directed form of soft power; one of the aims seems to be overcoming widespread insecurity among young Chinese about the nation’s standing as a cultural producer by appealing to civilisational benchmarks.
Having control of narratives is essential to managing national image. Another political mantra in the PRC is ‘to tell Chinese stories well’, (讲好中国故事). According to the logic of propaganda this will enable ‘discourse power’ (话语权), a description that would have appealed to the French philosopher Michel Foucault. Along with discourse power, the state reinforces a narrative that US power is in terminal decline. Many intellectuals in China are readers of Nye and are aware of the historical context of his concept.
The problem with the formulation ‘to tell Chinese stories well’ is the adverb well, as much as the actual content of the stories. Chinese stories may be told well to natives of China, for instance the blockbusters Wolf Warrior Two and The Wandering Earth, but gratuitous nationalism doesn’t connect with the sensibilities of world audiences.
Some outputs of the Korean Wave contain strong critiques of domestic social stratification, hence the appeal to global audiences. This kind of narrative content is mostly underground in China or shown in art house screenings abroad. And while the bulk of Korean Wave success is apolitical pop produced on the factory-line, the Chinese government has sought to restrict its influence. Korean TV formats and fashions have been successful. On balance, the Korean Wave connects with younger fan demographics in China, a generation that is prone to ‘lying flat’ (躺平), a neologism associated with indifference to ambition.
Contributions to South Korea’s GDP are often noted, as is the upgrading of Korea’s image. Some even argue that South Korea may become a cultural superpower. However, aside from celebrating nationalism, this variant of cultural soft power lacks political ambition. It is fundamentally ephemeral.
Humanity faces existential threats brought by industrial capitalism and superpower rivalry. A different type of cultural power is rising, soft, but with a harder edge, able to attract and change minds. A recent example illustrates such ‘cultural resistance power’. When the Hong Kong government brought an injunction in early June 2023 to ban the unofficial anthem Glory to Hong Kong, which is considered seditious, within 24 hours versions of the song occupied all top iTunes 10 spots.
This arguably is a harder variant of soft power, with the emphasis on power, not pop. And I believe this is the value of this event, to move beyond celebrating the nationalism of the Korean Wave in order to determine its deeper effects.
[i] Loveleen Tandan, an Indian native and casting director, was listed as co-director but the credit for the film was taken by Englishman Danny Boyle.
[ii] Nye, Joseph S (2021): Soft power: the evolution of a concept, Journal of Political Power, DOI: 10.1080/2158379X.2021.1879572
[iii] Nye, Joseph S (2021): p.2
[iv] See Chengxin Pan, Benjamin Isakhan and Zim Nwokora (2019) Othering as soft-power discursive practice: China Daily’s construction of Trump’s America in the 2016 presidential election, Politics, 1-16.
[v] Groys, Boris. (2008) Art Power (The MIT Press) (pp. 4). The MIT Press. Kindle Edition.
[vi] Yan Xuetong (2011) Ancient Chinese Thought, Modern Chinese Power, translated by Daniel Bell and Sun Zhe, Princeton University Press.
Michael Keane 
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