| Since the late 1970 s and early 1980 s,China has made efforts to expand its soft power by building friendly relations with many countries around the globe.For this reason,China has expanded economic interest in Africa by means of mutual development and investment,economic cooperation and trade.This has led to the growth of ‘soft' ties between China and Africa,through the provision of aid and diplomatic cooperation.Chinese soft power is primarily concerned with influencing the hearts and minds of foreign public and maintaining its good image to the world.As China's status rises on the global stage,its soft power has become a subject of scholarly scrutiny in recent years.China has moved quickly and made selfconscious efforts to mobilize its soft power resources to promote its interest and cultivate its influence as a rising power.In order to ease growing tensions and anxieties about China's rise,it has embraced the notion of soft power by providing assistance in a form of infrastructure,grants,agriculture,health,etc especially to developing countries.This,among others,is evident in China's assistance towards a number of infrastructure projects like roads and buildings especially to developing countries.However,in recent years,the focus of China's soft power has partly been shifted to capacity building and ICT development with a number of Ghanaian students and professionals being offered Chinese-funded training courses in education,trading,communication,energy,auditing,agriculture and fisheries operations.Nonetheless,not much attention has been directed at the role its educational exchange programs play in providing a deeper understanding of China's Soft Power and Public Diplomacy strategies.It is for this reason that this study seeks to assess the impact of China's Soft Power strategy on Ghanaian scholarship beneficiaries.It further seeks to assess the extent to which the beneficiaries have accepted Chinese culture and development values such that they may want to advocate for an alternative development model for Ghana.In a nutshell,this research will seek to measure the impact of China's soft power strategy in Ghana by determining the perception of Ghanaian scholarship beneficiaries towards the image of China.This piece of work supports its arguments in five main sections.Chapter one introduced the rationale for this study,its research objectives,the problem statement,the research methodology and an introduction to the theoretical framework that was used in this study.Chapter two defined soft power and diplomacy and their related concepts followed by the theoretical approach to soft power which was guided by international relations theories.The theoretical approach of this study is grounded in the traditions of International Relations(IR).China's involvement in Africa and in particular China-Ghana relations is explained from the liberalism perspective of International Relations theory since it emphasizes on co-operation and can therefore explain China's stance towards Africa with a focus on Ghana in terms of soft power.Therefore,soft power and its use with regard to educational and cultural context would is analyzed.Soft Power and Public Diplomacy was also defined from China's perspective.This background is not presented as a history of China but instead identifies some of the most salient historical aspects for understanding China's current use of soft power in Africa.The nature of that soft power and how it also affects our theoretical understanding of soft power has been explored.It also highlights China's political diplomatic skills in persuading African countries to become strategic partners by signing several treaties and agreements that may have led to increased cooperation or stronger ties between Beijing and African countries.It concludes with an analysis of several thoughts on the direction of Sino-Africa relations and where they may be possibly heading in the near future.Chapter three provides an insight into of Chinese Higher Education and its relevance to Ghana.It also provides a historical background to the relationship between China and Ghana and evaluates the influence of the Chinese education exchange program by assessing its strengths and limitations.It is worthy to note that one of China's diplomatic achievements in Africa especially Ghana is through capacity building programs.Chinese-sponsored human capacity building programs target African personnel and professionals of diverse backgrounds.It aims at fostering high-level human resource training in these Africa.It also gives an insight into how far Chinese Higher Education has become increasingly open in terms of international exchange and cooperation,and further talks about how China welcomes international students to pursue higher education in China.In addition,the study explains how the Chinese education system accepts highquality foreign institutions of higher education to partner with Chinese universities in cooperatively running schools.It concludes the chapter with an insight into the strengths and limitations of Chinese Higher Education.Chapter four presents an evaluation of research findings from a survey conducted on Ghanaian beneficiaries of the Government of China's scholarship program.This section forms the thrust of the research work and data gathered from the survey is analyzed and given interpretations.The analysis is done with the aid of graphs in order to give a clearer and better understanding of the findings for its users.The respondents were mainly beneficiaries studying in various institutions in China under the PRC government's scholarship scheme and a few other Ghanaian professionals who had had the privilege of going through some form of capacity building in China.Chapter five provides recommendations as basis for the way forward and presents the conclusions for the study. |
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