Opportunities

Abstract

Abstract Some of the motivations for China’s expanded soft and sharp power campaigns today were the limits of its earlier charm offensive, the seismic changes in Chinese domestic politics during the era of Xi Jinping, the growing appeal of China’s developmental model amidst democracies’ domestic problems, and the simple fact that China is becoming a major global power—economically, strategically, and diplomatically. As a more dominant power, Beijing needs a bigger set of tools to protect and expand its strategic and economic reach, across a far broader array of regions, and to mitigate the growing anger in some countries over China’s more assertive diplomacy and foreign policy choices. But a major factor behind this expanded campaign as well was opportunity—particularly, the opportunity to wield sharp power. Many democracies seemed quite vulnerable to sharp power. And by the 2010s, China had greater resources to deploy on sharp power tactics that already had begun to show promise, and was learning from Russia’s sharp power examples that showed weaknesses in other countries to sharp power. Australia and New Zealand were some of the first to face serious Chinese influence in their political systems and media.