The Foreign Aid Of China, The United States And Japan To Southeast Asia After The Cold War-from The Theoretical Perspective Of Soft Power

Foreign Aid becomes a significant issue in the international relations after the World War Ⅱ.Since the adoption of Marshall Plan, the foreign aid has been gradually regarded as one of theimportant diplomatic tools which the sovereign states carry out their foreign policies. However,the foreign aid faces a series of new challenges after the Cold War. These could be showed thatthe foreign aid issue is no longer just about the cooperation at material level, but nowadays italso requires the exchanges and recognitions from the soft power area. In the case of China, thesame time when accepting the aids from the other countries, China is also positively going withthe foreign aids to outside world. As the second largest economy, the range and the scale of theforeign aid taken by China are increasing obviously. Besides, as a non-DAC membershipcountry, the role played by China is becoming more and more important. In the future road ofcountry rejuvenation, the issues on how to regulate and map out the Chinese foreign aid and thenbetter adapt to the new trends home and abroad, and how to improve the identity, understandingand sound interaction so as to upgrade the positive impact of China remain to be further studied.This paper will look at the foreign aid, and focus on the two decades after the Cold War. Thenthrough the comparison between the United States “Strategic Aid” and the Japanese“Development Aid”, which are the two typical examples in the modern international aid system,it will systematically analyze the policies, practices and characteristics of the foreign aid toSoutheast Asian counties offered by China, the United States and Japan. It also specificallycompare and analyze the purpose of foreign aid, typically aid areas, aid objects and aid programsvia case studies, discuss the state soft power’s theoretical background, role and system on theimpact of foreign aid, and make the comparison on the “soft power” competitions that threecountries do to the Southeast Asian region. All these aim at exploring the improving way offoreign aid so as to improve the country’s soft power.Through the studies on the issue of foreign aid, the paper raises the concept of “Soft ForeignAid”. At this point, the foreign aid of China has to be away from the “Mercantilism”， whichmeans that the cooperation should not only stay at the material level. Instead of that, China has toexplore more exchanges and recognitions from the value aspect and spiritual level so that totransfer the Chinese hard power to the soft power via promoting the foreign aid.