City’s Role In China’s Public Diplomacy

China’s public diplomacy has made significant achievements since the step into21Century,whom tends to filled with diversified actors, abundant contents, and flexible paths. Meanwhile, asan important sub-national actor in the international relations, city has become a crucial part ofChina’s public diplomacy with a more diversified communication with the world.China’s public diplomacy has grown out of nothing and gradually developed into a maturephase. Consequently, a modern China who carries forward its great tradition and advocatespeaceful development has stand out in the international arena. However, China confronts lots offrustrations and difficulties in the process of image-building. The reasons include westerncountries’hostile to socialistic China, inherent strategic flaws of China’s public diplomacy andother practical difficulties. Actually, China indeed developed from poor and blank with a shortspan of60years, which leads to many deficiencies among the areas like economic development,cultural transmission and social construction, etc. In consideration of the national reality, it is aproblem for China how to shape a positive image and spread the harmonious world idea.The paper aims to analyze that city is an important sub-national actor on the fundamental ofsub-national actors’ theory, and city plays a crucial role in the current international arena. A casestudy of Shanghai city will be illustrated to research the crucial role of China’s city in the area of:build the city image even the country image, expand the public diplomacy platform, safeguardnational interest and promote China’public diplomacy.Shanghai has saw a more than thirty years’internationalized process with the reform andopening-up policy since1978, and it has become a famous visiting card in China’s internationalaffairs. Since the opening of Qing Dynasty, Shanghai has always leading the city’s internationalimage building aspect in China. Especially in21century, Shanghai has gained a higherinternational status through hosting the large-scale international seminar activities such as APECand EXPO2010. Through the case study of Shanghai, the paper reviews its international activities’history and aims to analyze Shanghai’s role in promoting the development of China’s publicdiplomacy. Besides, the paper tries to summarize some experience and lessons and provide areference to amplify city’s role in promoting China’s public diplomacy through the case study ofShanghai.