An Overview Of American Public Diplomacy And Analysis Of Its Status Quo

Public Diplomacy is a kind of diplomatic activity which is carried out by a state's government and targeted at foreign audiences, usually in forms of cultural, educational and information exchanges. As a major means to establish a state's positive image and advance soft power in international community, public diplomacy has been valued by many countries and included in their diplomatic arsenal.The United States is prominent in applying pubic diplomacy. Since the World War II, public diplomacy has long become a common tool in its foreign policy. It played an important role in winning the Cold War for the United States, but was once ignored by the administrations after the end of the Cold War. Public diplomacy regained attention from the US Government after the September 11 terrorist attack. The US reinforced the public diplomacy in hope of raising its declining international image and winning minds and hearts in the world. However, due to the limits of the public diplomacy and the errors and mistakes that the US government committed, the US is still suffering a public diplomacy dilemma.This dissertation will focus on analyzing the lessons, experiences and issues of the US pubic diplomacy. I hope these analyses may be helpful and inspirational to China's efforts to develop its own public diplomacy.