Projecting Soft Power Through International Education

In international relations, power can be characterized as "hard power" and "soft power". There are many foreign policy objectives that can be pursued and advanced by one's "soft power", namely, "the ability to achieve goals through attraction rather than coercion".With the transformation of world power in the post cold-war era, cultural,political and socio-economic factors on which soft power is often based are given more weight by nations in defining national strength and international influence. Soft power is exercised through dissemination of information, export of cultural values and ideology as well as international institutions and regimes that often set agenda, make rules, and institute norms which tend to guide how public diplomacy is conducted.This dissertation addresses the linkage between soft power and international education, the latter of which both as an integral part of US public diplomacy and important private endeavors plays an important role in exporting and promoting American cultural values. The dissertation takes the Hopkins-Nanjing Center for Chinese and American Studies as an in-depth case study of the institutionalization of the exercise of American soft power via international educational institutions.An overall review of the literature on soft power studies reveals that there's so far no important scholarly publication particularly dedicated to addressing the linkage between soft power and international education in general and the institutionalization of the exercise of soft power through international education in particular. By taking an in-depth case study, this study is designed to fill the gap in the literature with a detailed analysis of the practice of the educational joint ventures in the exercise of soft power.