The Research On National Soft Power From The Perspective Of Political Culture

In 1990, after the concept of "soft power" was proposed by United States scholars Joseph S.Nye,Jr., researchers of international relations were interested in it. In the next year, this concept came into the scholars' research field in China. The present statistical data indicates that there are not too much domestic studies in this field before 2005,but then it has been a research upsurges. This boom was formed by the rapidly rising international ranking of China economic volume, the increasing international influence of China, the Chinese confidence in national future, and China leaders'emphasis on the national soft power. So, the concept of soft power has became a hot topic in scholars, politicians and the media.This upsurge helps us understand and research on soft power from the angle of multi-dimensional, but it is easy to lead people into a situation of misuse and abuse about the concept, and Nye just thinked so. The reason causing misuse and abuse about the concept is that the soft power theory has internal defects, and there are differences between the intension and extension about the concept. The defects of the soft power theory derived from the contradictoriness of America's political culture connotation fundamentally. In addition, the complicated and interlaced of soft power also led the different cognition of people to national soft power. The soft power theory in the past, especially during the cold war (especially with political thought, political values and political ideology) showed a comprehensive inductive interpretation of the soft power competition between countries with a cultural concept shape, which was a contribution in international relations theory. Just because this concept was rooted in the cold war, it was led by a struggle about the hard power of military, economy and the soft power of political institution, political culture between the capitalist camp headed by United States and the socialist camp headed by the Soviet union, so the soft power concept and the related theory have caused attention by the world, especially in China. In this process, the western scholars discussed the soft power theory less than China.From the current domestic research of soft power, the related research from the perspective of political culture is weak, this may be the most important reason why the research on domestic soft power was misunderstood and abused. On the one hand, this kind of misunderstanding and abusing was depart from the limit of the whole text context what Nye had said, on the other hand, the soft power theory was outside of the limits of the political culture of USA. When this kind of soft power breaking away from the political culture was applied in the research of China's soft power, it not only hinders people from understanding the political culture and political institution which plays an important role in the soft power, but also interferes with the people to choice the way to promote China's soft power. From a historical perspective, ancient Athens have a profound influence on the western civilization today, and in the course of modern British arising sadly in the 16th century then going towards " the empire on which the sun never sets" in the 19th century, the political culture plays a decisive role in some degree. Now the United States as the world's unique country which has acquired preeminent soft or hard power in just only more 100 years, the political culture may rise one of the most critical factor in it. Interestingly, the 1950s and 1960s American political cultural studies in the main purpose of the rise of emerging countries, especially how to spread and penetration the socialist country for American democracy, human rights and freedom of political culture, American political culture is itself closely with the national soft power associated with the expansion. Of course, the political culture can not exist independently from the political institution, the role of political culture in the event often reflects the political institution. For this reason, Nye believes that the U.S. can rely on both economic and military hard power to lead the world, and it can better rely on its soft power demonstrated by its political institution and political culture rationally and effectively to be the leadership in the world. Therefore, we can from the historical angle to analyze how the political culture is one of the decisive influence on soft power.From the history of China, Tang Dynasty was undoubtedly a powerful era about soft power, and Qing Dynasty was a contrary one. China's soft power has falled down from Tang dynasties' peak into Qing Dynasties' valley, this clearly demonstrated the evolution clearly in which the traditional political culture of China influenced on the traditional soft power of China. In recent times,the traditional dominants political culture,the western political culture and the socialist political culture constitute the backbone parts of the contemporary Chinese political culture pattern collectively. Now there is a view of China's strategy community that China's current and future soft power are worrying about. The reason of it may be that China's political and social inner conflict and chaos caused by the contemporary Chinese political culture of multiple structure and the internal contradictions, which obstructed the rationality and validity with the socialist political institution and political culture, and intercalated numerous difficulties for China to construct the soft power, so that China's soft power is largely rely solely on the economic success relatively. This national soft power lacking of a socialist political institution and political culture of convincing support is weak, and it is unreliable. China's soft power how to get out of difficulties needs reform and improvement about the political institution and begin to build a socialist political culture. This is a long and arduous historic task. However, the socialist political culture will surely give China's soft power construction a direction in the heavy fog——to build a prosperous, democratic, civilized and harmonious socialist country will become the ultimate goal of China's soft power building.