Study On The Building Of National Leader Brand Within The System Of Public Diplomacy In Globalization Era

With the advent of globalization, economic, political and culturalexchanges between nations have become ever more frequent. As majorparticipants of international exchanges, the public have been playing anincreasingly important role in international relations. While the trendof the globalization era being openness and popularization in diplomaticmatters, it calls for the public diplomacy to step onto the stage ofhistory. Citizen diplomacy, evolving from the development of society, isnow a new field of public diplomacy in the background of globalization.It allows citizens to perform diplomatic activities with the public ofother countries as subjective, through which whey blend in with theinternational society and elevate the national image by personal ororganizational brand building. National leaders are the most special kindof citizen, and the importance of national leaders’ brand building isbeyond argument for their commonness as a citizen and uniqueness in theirposition that represents the image of the nation and government.This paper focuses on “national leader’s brand”, a rather newconcept in academic field domestic and abroad. Similar concepts includenational leader image, national leader media image and so on. The authorwill try to define the concept of “national leader’s brand” in the paperand the study will be carried on within the system of public diplomacyand integral diplomacy. The theoretical meaning of this paper lies inperfection of diplomatic theory system and the supplement to the relativetheory of political communication and personal brand. In practice, thispaper may build the national image and protect national interest. Thedissertation systematically collects and organizes relative theories ofpublic diplomacy, brand, national brand and personal brand and tries toperfect the analytic framework of “national leader brand” and analyzes the constraint and influence in its construction.In the part of case study, the paper picks practical cases of Chinaand America for comparative study. Wen Jiabao, former premiere of China,a representative of national figures since globalization and thecountry’s reform and opening up, is chosen to be the subject of nationalleader brand building for a systematic study, while the brand buildingcases of several national leaders of America since1970’s are studiedfrom various aspects. Through comparison of Chinese and American Nationalleader brand building in political, economic and cultural perspectives,the paper will project policy and suggestions in China’s national leaderbrand building.With the more emphasis on public diplomacy in globalization era andthe arrival of “charm diplomacy”, study of national leader brandbuilding will become an even more positive impetus in the national imageconstruction, national voice expansion and national culturalcommunication.