Multilateral Diplomacy And Soft Power

The international academic community has a lot of expositions for the theory,since “soft power” was advanced by Joseph·Nye in1990. Nye suggested the culture,political values and foreign policy were the three major sources of soft power when hedescribed the academic concept. He also thinks that as compared to bilateral diplomacy,multilateral diplomacy is more important to enhance a country’s soft power in thepolitics of the real world.In recent years, China utilizes multilateral diplomacy to improve the foreignrelations with the Association of Southeast Asian（ASEAN）enthusiastically. NowChina has become the most important external power for many countries in SoutheastAsia, and her “soft power” was also enhanced in this region. However with theU.S. high-profile return to Southeast Asia and the growing influence of Japan and Indiain South-East Asia, this region will become the arena of competition between UnitedStated，Japan，India and China, and the competition in soft power will become amajor issue in a long time.So there lies both theoretical and practical significance to undertake a comparativestudy in multilateral diplomacy and the exercise of soft power by United States，Japan， India and China on ASEAN. As the starting point of the evolution ofmultilateral diplomatic policies of the four countries in Southeast Asia, and thesubsequent comparative analysis of the main characteristics and constraints vis-à-vismultilateral diplomatic policy, the main research focus of the article is “soft power”and then make a comprehensive generalization and analysis of the four countries’ softpower and multilateral diplomacy.