Joseph Nye’s "Soft Power" And Its Influence In China

Joseph Nye’s "Soft Power" theory produces in20th century90’s, which is a response to whether the of decline of United States happens. Joseph Nye’s "Soft Power" theory is both the product as the development of traditional international relationship theory continues and the consequence of requirement of the international policies of the United States. Although Joseph Nye’s "Soft Power" theory has the typical United States style, it does provide us with a much broader aspect to solve the international complicated dispute which is difficult to use the hard power to tackle. Our research focus on the production and development of soft power from political science, science of international relations, philosophy, ideological and political education, outlines and analyzes the basic contents of Joseph Nye’s "Soft Power" theory. Further, with the direction of Marxism our research combines both macroeconomic research and microanalysis, utilizes the hybrid method which contains both the history and logics, scientific comparison methods to analyze the "Soft Power" theory comprehensively.The starting point of Joseph Nye’s "Soft Power" theory is the unsatisfactory towards the explanatory power with the realism pattern of international relationship. He thinks that realism emphasizes the hard power too much. However, nowadays, culture, policy, sense of value become more and more important when tackling the international affairs. In that case, all the countries should learn new source of power to realize their purpose. The new power is named as the soft power by Joseph Nye.The soft power is compared with the hard power, which is a kind of ability to use attraction instead of force to realize the purpose. Compared with the hard power, it has such characteristics as intangibility, permeability, complementarity, comprehensiveness and expansibility. The soft power mainly stems from culture, political values, and international policies, it consists of seven aspects, emissive power of culture, emotional appeal of political power, effect of international policies, attraction power of the national image, the responsibility for the international system, the cohesive force of the countries and nationalities, and the Maintenance force of national security and interests. Thus, we can conclude that the core of "Soft Power" theory is to emphasize the attraction, emotional appeal and influence of the national culture, the sense of value and political system. The soft power provides us with a new direction to view the power, which avoids the one-sidedness to determine the power of a country mainly based on the physical power. It does provide the United States with a new strategy direction to maintain the international hegemony which can also be well used as reference for the development of soft power by other countries. But the "Soft Power" theory is still a complete new concept and has the limitations to some extent. Although the "Soft Power" theory was produced in order to ensure the hegemony status of the United States in the world, it still provides China with significant insight into the development of Chinese soft power. We need to selectively adopt and absorb the great achievements of different countries based on the inheriting and carrying forward Chinese great culture, enhance the communication and spreading ability of national culture, expand the influence of national culture through the attraction and effect of culture, play the leading role of sense of core value of socialism, cultivate and set up the sense of core value of socialism, and enhance national cohesion through the construction of sense of core value of socialism. Building the relationship among different countries with friendly sense of identity, enhance Chinese discourse power will make China achieve the affirmation of international communities, build the excellent image, obtain the respect, and eventually enhance the soft power of our nation.