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The Challenges And Suggestions For The New Period Of China’s National Image Building:in The Perspective Of Public Diplomacy

Posted on:2015-03-12Degree:MasterType:Thesis
Country:ChinaCandidate:M WangFull Text:PDF
GTID:2296330431997752Subject:International relations
Abstract/Summary:PDF Full Text Request
National image is an overall and comprehensive evaluation of a country by the public home and abroad. It reflects a country’s comprehensive strength and international position, which isn’t only intangible asset of a sovereign country, but also a critical embodiment of national soft power. Over the past over30years, China has achieved further development in terms of economic aggregates and international impact since its reform and opening up. As one of emerging countries which have developed rapidly, China has undoubtedly made great accomplishments in economic construction. Nonetheless, it is still relatively backward in construction of soft power compared with its rapid growth of hard power. Western countries are mostly confused and apprehensive about China’s development and even revolt against China. In the course of China’s reform and development, inconsistent arguments such as China Threat Theory and China Responsibility Theory have always existed. In particular, Western countries have begun to criticize China’s development model and concept of governing the country as China has played an increasingly prominent role in stabilizing world economy and driving the growth of world economy since2008international financial crisis. They’ve even imputed all problems concerning exchange rate, trade and climate, etc to China to painstakingly distort China’s national image in international societies, attempting to impact China’s peaceful development and steady increase of soft power. Nowadays, governments attach great importance to national image in all countries and a growing amount of countries list the construction of national image as part of national strategies with the increase in role of soft power as globalization and informatization are constantly deepened. At present, it is more necessary for China to grasp development opportunities from development and changes of international situation for the purpose of improving China’s national image and increasing its soft power according to realities by conforming to trends and taking advantage of opportunities for development.How to effectively respond to the challenges concerning soft power by firmly grasping great strategic opportunities in the context of globalization? To carry out public diplomacy may be considered to be favorable for a country’s government to successfully construct national image and increase national soft power. Compared with traditional diplomacy, public diplomacy primarily aims at communicating with the public from foreign countries through various modern means of communication, comprehensively introducing China’s national situation to the world, publicizing governmental policies and viewpoints and resolving doubts and misunderstandings of the public from foreign countries. Besides, efforts are made to promote national excellent cultures, publicize core values and concepts and actively increase the knowledge of the public from foreign countries about China, so as to shape national image, increase national soft power and maintain national interests. Over the past few years, all countries have attached more and more importance to public diplomacy no matter in developed, developing, large or small countries. They’ve successively carried out distinctive public diplomacy by making use of their separate advantages, which have achieved good performances in increasing their countries’ cultural influence, constructing and improving national images, strengthening national soft power and maintaining national interests and so on by implementing governmental public diplomacy, reinforcing international communication via media and carrying out extensive exchanges of foreign cultures, etc. Under powerful leadership of the Communist Party of China, China has also achieved vigorous development in public diplomacy. In this paper, theories about public diplomacy and national images as well as China’s practices of public diplomacy and future development trends are preliminarily examined. This paper is mainly divided into three chapters as follows.Chapter1focuses on theoretically introducing public diplomacy and national images. It defines origin, concept, connotation and roles of public diplomacy as well as connotation, components, influential factors and the characteristics of national image. Meanwhile relationships between public diplomacy and national images are analyzed. On one hand, public diplomacy is pointed out to be able to construct and improve national images. On the other hand, national images play a role that can’t be ignored in carrying out public diplomacy to certain extent. National images are mainly constructed by public diplomacy via three methods, including governmental public diplomacy, media communication and cultural exchanges. In Chapter2, beginning and development of China’s public diplomacy with modern significance are analyzed. According to the "China’s National Image Survey Report2012" jointly released by the Peace Research Association, the China International Publishing Group and the Millward Brown, status quo of China’s national image and the predicaments China encounters in realities are analyzed. In this chapter, a detailed introduction is made to China’s practices in constructing national image by carrying out public diplomacy, mainly including founding special organizations responsible for public diplomacy, strengthening international communication power of media, carrying out extensive cultural&educational exchanges and actively hosting international meetings and activities, etc. In Chapter3, the author reflects on China’s construction of national image by conducting public diplomacy in a new period. This chapter analyzes unfavorable international public opinions about China, Western countries’ strong power of media communication, three major challenges in a new media era and three main deficiencies (including simple entities for carrying out public diplomacy, incomplete organization management mechanism and inherent misunderstandings). According to these practical problems, viewpoints and suggestions are put forward to steadily promote the construction of China’s national image via public diplomacy and increase national soft power by "making concepts of diplomacy innovative, reinforcing top-level design of public diplomacy","integrating resources, shaping national brand image","enhancing organization construction and facilitating harmonious development of public diplomacy", etc.
Keywords/Search Tags:Public diplomacy, China’s national image, Soft power
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