Some thoughts on soft power rankings

Growing up in the 1970s and 1980s, I was obsessed, like so many other young people at that time, with the music charts. Every Sunday afternoon we would listen to Radio 1 to know which artists were climbing the charts, who were falling and, most importantly, who was Number One that week.

I am reminded of my preoccupation with the music charts as Portland publishes its latest Soft Power 30 report. This is an attempt to rank countries according to their alleged soft power resources and capacity with much celebration - especially within the British Council -  that the UK is Number 1.

What does this mean? Well, very little. It is a beauty contest approach to soft power that focuses overwhelmingly on cultural and educational outputs, encourages governmental and non-governmental actors and institutions to obsess over the perception of their activities, promotes the false idea that generating soft power can be strategised, and is a distraction from engaging in policy initiatives that will genuinely make a difference at home and abroad, rather than simply alter one's place in the rankings.

The bottom line is simple: Do the right thing because it is the right thing to do, not because it may generate more soft power or increase the number of tourists or students to our shores. Getting the right policy right is absolutely essential, which means not accepting the question that rankings encourage: 'How can we get them to like us more?'  The generation of soft power is a by-product of how governments behave, not an end in itself. It is a resource not an instrument.  Governments can only strategise how to govern; they cannot strategise how to generate more soft power, only give the public and cultural diplomacy instruments the authority and resources to do a better job of communicating it. As I have argued before, if you feel you need to have a soft power strategy, it means you don't have any. Reading such surveys is like holding up a mirror and letting countries see in its reflection what they want to see - a positive or less than positive image of one's image: But so what?

Rankings also encourage users to question the inclusion or exclusion of particular countries. The 2018 Soft Power 30, for example, does not include Taiwan, even though it is a functioning democracy that practices and promotes liberal-democratic values and has enormous cultural capacity (a metric that rankings particularly relish). If we insist on measuring soft power, then Taiwan should be almost at the top - if not at the very top - among countries in Asia. Taiwan does the right thing because it is the right thing to do, especially in terms of aid and humanitarian assistance to its neighbours. It is the first in Asia to legalise same sex marriage. What other measures of soft power do we need to include Taiwan in such rankings?  

The UK government and other institutions engaged in global outreach - especially the British Council who seem to commission these soft power reports and surveys on a regular basis - would do well to avoid such rankings and sidestep any drive towards seeing the UK in a soft power race or competition with any other international actor. It isn't. Rankings do not and cannot measure in a qualitative way what is truly valuable: the actual response of target audiences to the UK's soft power capacity, and  how such audiences change their opinions or behaviour in relation to their engagement with the UK (ie. focus more on 'power').

In his 2009 book subtitled Adventures in British Democracy, Patrick Hannan reported on a decision to 'restore free NHS care to failed asylum seekers in Wales' in 2008. He concluded, 'The message is clear: we are good people'. The image is not constructed; it is a consequence of behaviour and the principles we maintain.

Soft power derives from the 'power of example' and 'doing the right thing because it is the right thing to do', not because we are in a race to be Number One in the charts.      

References

Patrick Hannan (2009), A Useful Fiction: Adventures in British Democracy (Bridgend: Seren), p.130.

A tale of two soft powers: Wales and Taiwan

As readers of my work will already know, I depart from the idea that "culture" is a defining feature of a nation-state's soft power capacity. Rather, I argue that soft power derives from political institutions and processes; their transparency and accountability, the guaranteed freedoms of assembly, speech, and the right to criticise one's own government; and from the way governments behave towards both their own citizens and towards citizens of other nation-states. Sometimes, this means allowing difficult, uncomfortable and unpalatable opinions to surface.

Two stories appeared in 48 hours to demonstrate the considerable soft power capacity of both Taiwan and Wales. Courtesy of Klaus Bardenhagen, a German reporter who lives and works in Taiwan, I found this photo of pro-China activists in Taiwan.

 
This will make many people living inside and outside Taiwan uneasy. However, this is soft power in action. Taiwan is sending a positive message to the international community that it tolerates the public expression of opinions and political positions that may be contrary to mainstream ideas. This communicates Taiwan's democratic values, and stands as a powerful contrast to the PRC's political culture: would China's government allow or tolerate any such mobilisation for Taiwan's independence?

Wales has a different, though equally powerful narrative, one that moves beyond the expression of Welsh culture. On 12th April 2018, BBC Wales news reported how 'A family who fled the war in Syria have thanked a Ceredigion town for helping them rebuild their lives'. Readers learn that 'The Alchikh family came to Wales as part of the Home Office's community sponsorship scheme after local group Croeso Telfi raised thousands of pounds to take part'. You can see the BBC's story here: Syrian refugees thank people of Cardigan for help. As I have said many times, actions always speak louder than words, and by embracing refugees Wales is projecting a positive message about core values; and it helps not because it wishes to be seen to be helping, but just to help - the most powerful  message of all.

Wales and Taiwan have tremendous soft power capacities - for example, by upholding values of common decency, treating the vulnerable and dissenting opinions well and with respect - but I argue they both need help to identify and communicate this soft power.

 



     

Taiwan Studies Workshop in Brno, 2013

I spent a week in Brno in the Czech Republic, attending a week-long workshop on Taiwan for students across Europe. The students were brilliant - enthusiastic, engaged, curious, insightful and delightful - and the level of discussion was admirable. They were all ready and eager to start at 9am on Monday morning and they were still there at 5pm on Friday. Such commitment!

I taught two sessions, one on Taiwan's democratic transition and one on Taiwan's soft power. The students delivered very thoughtful presentations on these topics and they had obviously worked very hard. While Ewa Aniskiewicz and Jacek Baniak from Krakow discussed what we might call the outputs-based approach - focusing on the methods Taiwan uses to exercise soft power in the international domain - Amina Abievai located soft power within a broader discussion of international relations theory, including a discussion of Niccolo Machiavelli and his commitment to hard power. While Amina also concentrated on Taiwan's outputs, including the famous Bubble Tea, HTC and the success of film director Ang Lee, her presentation ended on an interesting note: how might Taiwan counter the PRC's soft power? she asked. Her answer threw me: 'Make Taiwan the Hawaii of the Far East.' This is an unusual proposition and it took me some time to analyse and understand what Amina meant; but she makes a very perceptive point, and it is one I would like to consider further in my research.

Ewa Aniskiewicz & Jacek Baniek talking about Taiwan's soft power

Amina Abievai: Taiwan as "The Hawaii of the East"

Amina agreed that democracy is Taiwan's most valuable theme of public diplomacy and represents soft power in practice - as regular readers of this blog know only too well, this is one of my favourite subjects. Amina pushed me to think this through a little more. Making Taiwan the Hawaii of the Far East, although a rather simplistic approach (and I really do not know enough about Hawaii to conclude whether it is a good model or not, though Steve McGarrett and Magnum PI will have their own opinions), in essence means making Taiwan a desirable place to live. I had just finished suggesting to the students that governments should not really be involved in the soft power process; they certainly should not try to strategise its exercise, but rather soft power is a natural by-product of what a government does and how it behaves at home and abroad. In short, I said, the job of governments is to govern, and to do so in an ethical, transparent and accountable way. Governments should let others tell the 'soft power' story if there is one and allow audiences the space to reach their own judgements based on what they see governments actually doing.

As Amina suggested, this means that the government of Taiwan should not try too hard to exercise its soft power. In addition to being a democratic power, the government can govern in such a way that the island continues to develop its potential - in education, healthcare, the environment, housing, the infrastructure and other policy areas - and this effort expended in actually governing Taiwan will reap soft power benefits.

As a postscript I would like to add that last week I read a chapter by a colleague who suggested that the exercise of soft power is all about talking up the good points about one's own country. I disagree and explained to the students that honesty is far more effective. A government accumulates far more credibility if it is open and honest about its mistakes and enters into discussion and dialogue about the less attractive characteristics of the country it represents. Audiences appreciate candour, self-reflection and self-criticism and the capacity to accept criticism from others. This may not lead to trust, but will not doubt contribute to a sense of self-integrity which, in soft power terms, is a good starting point.  

Taiwan's legislatures need to remember Actions Speak Louder Than Words

Taiwan is in the international news, and again it is for the wrong reasons. Members of Taiwan's Parliament, the Legislative Yuan, have once more been filmed fighting among themselves ahead of an important vote on the future of the island's nuclear industry. Footage from the Washington Post, available at Taiwan's parliament dukes it out, is making the rounds on the social media, much to the amusement of both journalists and audiences. While we are encouraged to laugh at this latest example of literal political combat, there are very clear soft power consequences associated with the actions by Taiwan's Parliamentarians.

Laughing at Taiwan does not encourage a serious discussion about the island's place in the international community, and its democratic system is ridiculed rather than applauded. At a time when Taiwan remains the first Chinese democracy, such behaviour reinforces the unreasonable idea that perhaps the Asian Values thesis is right after all. More importantly for Taiwan, fighting in the Legislative Yuan sends a very clear signal to the People's Republic of China and strengthens its propaganda: This is what happens in a so-called multi-party democratic political system; this is what we are protecting you from.

Taiwan's legislators need to understand that how they behave is a reflection of how Taiwan's political system is perceived. At a time when Taiwan is struggling to exercise soft power - to project its democratic virtues and ideals, and build upon one of its principal advantages, namely that Taiwan is not the PRC - such ridicule comes at a high price; and it is possibly too high a price for a state with few formal diplomatic relations and no voice in the international media. Taiwan's foremost resource is its credibility as a democracy, but this is a resource quickly squandered by the irresponsible conduct of its politicians. They should do all they can to make sure the world is talking about Taiwan, not laughing at it.

Silence is not always golden: The communication of Taiwan's democracy

As the keynote speaker at the 2013 annual conference of the European Association of Taiwan Studies (EATS), Professor T.J. Cheng of  William and Mary College delivered a characteristically interesting paper on Offshore Democracies: An Ideational Challenge to China. His intention is to understand how Taiwan is perceived in mainland China through examining the official and non-official discourses there about the island's democratic institutions and procedures. Two sections of his talk provoked a response from a soft power and public diplomacy perspective.

First, T.J. outlined the sibau minzhu, the 'quartet of evils' that define the official view about Taiwan's democracy. Discourses about the 'evils' are framed by key-words that focus on the more disturbing side of Taiwan's political evolution - black-gold, party-splitting etc.

From a PD perspective, such official discourses constitute part of the environment in which Taiwan must operate. It is unfortunate that China chooses to view Taiwan in such an out-dated way - the problems of corruption are now far worse in the mainland than they are in Taiwan where there is much less electoral corruption than previously - but the question that Taiwan must confront is how to respond and work within the constraints? Taiwan is not in a position to change the Chinese conversation, so must pay far more attention to its soft power capital and the quality of its public diplomacy strategy than previously. The external environment frames the architectures, methods, success and failures of Taiwan's international communications and determines their impact on elite audiences and mass opinion. I have talked about this many times in published papers and in blogs, and this argument forms the core of the book I am now writing which examines the interaction of structure and agency to understand Taiwan's soft power.

I felt that T.J. had inadvertently stumbled on a set of contradictions when he claimed that 'Taiwan's democracy is like a silent movie, more palatable than soundbites', and he applauded Taiwan's government for not hectoring the PRC about human rights abuses. T.J. is right to isolate the practice of democracy as a particularly useful communications strategy - in Public Diplomacy, actions really do speak louder than words - and by providing a model Chinese democracy, Taiwan is demonstrating the fallacy of so-called Asian values: There really is a political alternative for China. However, silence is not an option for Taiwan, and measured, strategic soundbites do have their value. Why be silent when the world is not listening to you anyway? For a state facing Taiwan's predicament, silence means an absence of attention, and so the government does not/cannot challenge the dominant narratives conducted in Beijing. Silence will not undermine a depiction of Taiwan which centres on 'the quartet of evils', circulating within a tightly controlled media and education system.  

T.J. is correct to commend the absence of hectoring and pontificating in Taiwan's interactions with the PRC, but such methods of communication are neither strategic nor desirable as they can backfire on the source of the message. Rather, Taiwan must strike a balance between silence - letting the story of Taiwan's democracy speak for itself - and making sure that story is heard by audiences conditioned to have a very different perception of reality. 

Another speaker on the Senkaku/Diayutai dispute prefaced her paper with a reference to 'manipulation' by the international media on this subject, evidence for which is provided by the fact that the media concentrate overwhelmingly on Japan and China and ignore Taiwan's claims on the islands. This sounds very similar to claims by Beijing that the international (read western) media deliberately demonise China, and that this accounts for the continuing popularity of the theory of cultural imperialism in China. As a communications scholar, I would reply that the international media know and understand China and Japan; their frames are familiar. Taiwan, however, is largely unfamiliar to international media consumers who have no real understanding of Taiwan or why Taiwan matters. The media will choose to sideline Taiwan because of the competition of voices, interests, stories and news-space, but also because journalists are denied the kind of structured and continuous interaction with diplomats and press officers that may yield coverage. My research reveals that Taiwan is passive in its acceptance of this situation - that its public diplomats and press officers sit back, see a crowded market place and believe that change is impossible. Being voiceless therefore becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.  

These comments connect with my discussion of T.J.'s paper and the consequences of accepting a 'silent movie' approach. Again, the international media are not necessarily ignoring Taiwan; Taiwan is not getting the message out and its voice heard because of the inadequacies of the public diplomacy structure.     

Set-backs in Taiwan's soft power

My core belief about Taiwan's soft power strategy is that it emphasises the wrong story: the narratives of Taiwan's successful democratisation and its current position as the first Chinese democracy are routinely ignored in favour of attempts to label Taiwan as the preserver of traditional Chinese culture. However, there is a significant flaw in my argument to which I need to draw attention, and that flaw is the continued use of the death penalty.

A recent report by the BBC  (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-18202396) highlights how Taiwan's judiciary often base their sentencing on unreliable evidence (or most disturbing of all, sometimes no evidence whatsoever). While this is hardly unique to Taiwan - all countries which mainain the death penalty risk making mistakes in sentencing the innocent to such a fate - this practice does constrain Taiwan's image as a maturing democracy and as a contrast to the PRC. Criticism by important organisations such as the European Union, and Amnesty International, more used to pointing the finger at the PRC than at Taiwan, has damaged its soft power.

However, I would suggest that what is more worrying than the fact that Taiwan maintains this barbaric practice, is that the political elites fear the wrath of public opinion should they decide to abolish the death penalty. Just because 'surveys show that more than 70% of the population favours it' does not make it right; sometimes leaders have to lead against public opinion - that is as much a characteristic of democracy as following it. The current President of Taiwan, Ma Ying-jeou, a keen advocate of 'Soft power', ended a short three year moratorium (2006-9) and appointed Justice Tseng Yung-fu who ordered four people executed in 2010 and a further five in 2011. 15 convicts were sentenced to death at the Supreme Court last year.

There are now 57 inmates serving time on death row. If Taiwan really wants to project itself as a benevolent democracy - and to provide an alternative to authoritarian rule in the PRC - then the abolition of the death penalty despite public opinion may just help elevate its international image and thus gather for Taiwan a little more support, respect and sympathy.

"Capitalizing on Taiwan's cultural Soft Power"

An article has been published in Taiwan Today (http://taiwantoday.tw/ct.asp?ctNode=1767&xItem=177647&mp=9) suggesting yet again that the cultural industries are at the heart of Taiwan's soft power. Following my interviews during the summer with government agencies involved in Taiwan's internationl outreach, I came to the conclusion that (a) Taiwan is placing too much faith in culture; (b) the government agencies responsible really do not know what they are doing or why they are doing it. I am heartened that, according to the article, the Council for Cultural Affairs (CCA) recognises that "Taiwan's advantage is its freedom and democracy," but the Council, like the Government Informational Office and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, chooses to ignore the narrative of Taiwan's democratisation in international outreach programmes, preferring instead to claim that Taiwan is the preserver of traditional Chinese culture. As I have said time and again - in these blogs and to the government agencies themselves - this is the wrong strategy.

What is clear from the article published in Taiwan Today is that there is a complete ignorance of what soft power really is and how it might be exercised. Government officials I spoke to were unable to answer three key questions: (1) For what purpose is Taiwan engaging in soft power? (ii) To which audiences? (iii) How doe you know if it is having any impact? The final question is the main problem with over-dependence on culture as a soft power strategy as I have made clear in previous postings. This is summarised in the quotation from the GIO: "Taiwan's pop music is a culturally and commercially valuable type of soft power ..." Why and to what benefit in soft power terms?

I identify three further problems in the article. The first is the suggestion that Taiwan should copy South Korea's strategy and therefore success. Certainly Taiwan could look abroad to its neighbours for inspiration, but it already stands accused of copying the PRC (remember the five mascots for the Taipei Floral Expo which were clear copies of the five mascots for the Beijing Olympics?). South Korea is not a model because it is a different country operating within a different set of social, political and cultural contexts. Taiwan needs to have the confidence to "stand up" (ironic words to use on the 100th Anniversary of the ROC) and be itself.

The second problem is in the concluding sentence of the article which is a quotation from a CCA official: "If we let up, other nations will catch up, and we'll lose our chance." Soft power is not constrained by time pressures; it works best as part of a long-term strategy, and its practitioners must realise that it can take years to build trust, credibility and appeal. Any attempt to design a short-term strategy that will have immediate effect is doomed to failure. Moreover, it is not a competition. By fearing that other nations will 'catch up', this quotation reveals the lack of confidence in Taiwan's soft power as a method of natural attraction.

Finally, I am genuinely peturbed that the photo used to accompany the article depicts the GIO Minister showing the government's support for an epic film released this year, "Seediq Bale". Since Seediq Bale, when it was released in Taiwan, did not have English subtitles, it is difficult to understand what soft power the government expects it to have. I know many expatriates living in Taiwan who wanted to see this landmark contribution to Taiwan's creative industries - a stirring story of Taiwan's  history - but could not watch it due to the absence of subtitles. A soft power opportunity missed?