this post was submitted on 16 Jun 2025
107 points (100.0% liked)
GenZedong
4574 readers
93 users here now
This is a Dengist community in favor of Bashar al-Assad with no information that can lead to the arrest of Hillary Clinton, our fellow liberal and queen. This community is not ironic. We are Marxists-Leninists.
This community is for posts about Marxism and geopolitics (including shitposts to some extent). Serious posts can be posted here or in /c/GenZhou. Reactionary or ultra-leftist cringe posts belong in /c/shitreactionariessay or /c/shitultrassay respectively.
We have a Matrix homeserver and a Matrix space. See this thread for more information. If you believe the server may be down, check the status on status.elara.ws.
Rules:
- No bigotry, anti-communism, pro-imperialism or ultra-leftism (anti-AES)
- We support indigenous liberation as the primary contradiction in settler colonies like the US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and Israel
- If you post an archived link (excluding archive.org), include the URL of the original article as well
- Unless it's an obvious shitpost, include relevant sources
- For articles behind paywalls, try to include the text in the post
- Mark all posts containing NSFW images as NSFW (including things like Nazi imagery)
founded 4 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Neither of these are exactly "soft" power, I think you're misinterpreting the term somewhat.
Soft power isn't so much to do with "diplomatic" power, but mainly the ability to more subtly influence others through positive attraction, such as through culture, religion, arts, film, music, fashion etc (such as Hollywood films acting as propaganda for US capitalist ideas, even when not made to explicitly do so). And in all honesty this is arguably one of China's weakest ways of projecting itself overseas, compared to the west. I'm just struggling to see how that really ties into the discussion here.
The Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) is an example of China using soft power.
soft powยทer
noun
a persuasive approach to international relations, typically involving the use of economic or cultural influence.
Everything I described falls under that, with their history of being the most level-headed economic player and growing more and more advanced by the day helps them out in their diplomacy. If you want an example that fits more of your definition, then I would point to the massive amount of brain-drain from the United States to China. I also mentioned productive forces. There is no misunderstanding here.
https://www.intelligentliving.co/why-chinese-scientists-leaving-us-stem/#%3A%7E%3Atext=By+2021%2C+a+striking+67%2Cworld%27s+scientific+expertise+is+centered.
https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/april-13/mother-of-all-bombs-afghanistan
This is older and was before China was leading the top 20 academic journals. They aren't so weak when they are successfully draining and using their "soft-power" to attract the brightest minds to their nation. They would lose a lot of this if they were to directly intervene or deploy in Iran against the United States.
https://www.scmp.com/news/china/science/article/3314949/us-brain-drain-set-gather-pace-academics-seek-posts-outside-trumps-america
This one is more recent.