With its rapidly growing economy, China has been cultivating its image around the world as an attractive, rising power that is non-threatening and non-confrontational. China's endeavor to promote its soft power involves shifting the focus from purely economic cooperation to other more subtle areas such as culture.

To that end, China has been investing boldly in public diplomacy, including launching multi-language satellite TV channels and websites, staging heritage exhibitions and art performances overseas, sponsoring students from other nations to study in China and paying for Chinese-language programs abroad.

The most outstanding achievement is its spread of Confucius Institutes (CIs) since the establishment of the first one in 2004. By the end of 2010, there were 322 Confucius Institutes and 369 Confucius classrooms established in 96 countries.

However, China faces many challenges in its soft power project.

First, different from Joseph Nye's conception of soft power, which consists of culture, political values and institutions, China's soft power takes culture as its main focus. This cultural soft power is presented within the framework of "socialist culture".

In this way the projection of cultural soft power is not simply about bolstering "culture security" and making cultural industries more competitive, but also about improving Chinese citizens' sense of identity and confidence in Chinese culture.

It means that while the culture industry in China reorients itself to the new global landscape, it also has to continue to play its function of instilling political values in the Chinese people.

In other words, unlike many countries where policy shifts from national integration and cultural maintenance to global competition and soft power at some point, China is working on them simultaneously. The intended audience of China's cultural soft power is both domestic and international.

The second related challenge comes from leaning too heavily on the cultural industry to establish the ideological foundation for social consensus at home and to build its soft power around the world. The importance of promoting culture was placed center stage at the 6th Plenary Session of the CPC's 17th Central Committee, when Chinese top leaders pledged to provide the sector with more resources.

However, as they are required to produce products that promote the socialist core values, cultural workers are prevented from reaching their full potential.

The restrictions also prevent China from packaging itself as a politically attractive partner internationally.

Take the media sector as an example. There is concern that using media for development and national identity building can lead to suppression of opposition voices and non-official media.

Also, China has successfully set up channels of communication around the world, but to get across to the global community the "socialist core values system" which all Chinese cultural products are required to embody is not an easy task: "the Marxist guiding ideology, the common ideal of socialism with Chinese characteristics, the national ethos with patriotism as the core and the spirit of the times with reform and innovation as the core, and the socialist concept of honor and disgrace."

China has to offer to the world a set of distinctive and attractive cultural and political values that are more readily accepted universally.

In the case of CIs, in comparison with other nation-state led language and cultural promotion organizations, they are by far the most prolific.

For example, Germany's Goethe-Institute operates 136 institutes and has 11 offices in 92 countries. The British Council has 160 offices in more than 100 countries including five offices in the UK.

However, in addition to the fear of the political influence of CIs, the rapid growth also raises the question of CIs' sustainability: what happens to the CIs following the first years of initial funding? How can this spending be justified for continuing public support?

China's presence and its influence in Africa may be revealing. Research shows that it is mostly the contributions to infrastructure development and new efforts at training and education opportunities that are perceived as symbols of China's increasing presence in Africa. They have also contributed to building the overall images of China in Africa. All of these suggest that China should not focus only on culture to showcase its soft power abroad.

The author is a senior fellow at the China Policy Institute and associate professor at the School of Contemporary Chinese Studies, the University of Nottingham, UK.

(China Daily 04/06/2012 page7)