Study On China's Public Diplomacy To Russian Federation

Since the 20^th century, diplomacy has increasingly gone beyond the province of elites-its design along with implementation are affected by a variety of social factors such as other social elites, interest groups,religious organizations and other NGOs. Public diplomacy acts as the supplement of traditional official diplomacy, it realizes the people-to-people exchanges between different countries through various non-governmental channels, with which it can enhance peoples' mutual understanding and possibly improve their national image. For this reason, every country attaches great importance to public diplomacy. In the course of developing friendly relations with its neighboring countries, China has come to know the importance of public diplomacy and holds that it should play a crucial role in China's neighboring diplomacy.Russia,as one of China's important neighboring countries,plays a key role in China's strategic chessboard. At present,the relationship between China and Russia stands for the best in history, and Sino-Russian comprehensive strategic partnership is developing healthily. However,China's national image in Russia is not so positive,while public diplomacy can contribute to shape a better national image,which makes China reconsider and pay attention to public diplomacy to Russia.Public diplomacy refers to a government through cultural exchanges,information projects and other forms to affect the foreign public opinion and improve their national image,thereby protecting their national interests. China's public diplomacy to the Russian Federation are composed of public relations diplomacy, cultural diplomacy and media diplomacy. Public relations diplomacy contains that conducted by heads of state,Ministry of Foreign Affairs and China's Embassy to Russia.Cultural diplomacy focuses on three aspects such as culture, education and tourism.Media diplomacy refers to the activities sponsored by traditional mass media-Radio, TV and printed media and the new media such as the Internet. China's public diplomacy to Russia possesses the following characteristics: diversified, cultural diplomacy-centered and government led. Although China has made some achievements in its public diplomacy to Russia, it encounters a variety of difficulties:insufficient participation of civil forces,lack of depth,and inability of mass media. In order to solve the above problems, China should take the following measures: first of all,it should encourage civil forces to participate in public diplomacy and weaken government's role in; secondly,China should better its cultural and educational exchange mechanism and pomote the cultural diplomacy between the two countries,given that, it is necessary to strengthen the related personnel's understanding of the culture and history of the two countries so as to achieve actual connectivity of their cultures; thirdly,China should improve the mass media's capability in public diplomacy by the means of perfecting its media facilities in Russia, strengthening the cooperation with the local mainstream media, and utilizing the local social media.Lastly, China ought to pay more attention to the research on Russia's public opinions,and improve the pertinency and practicality of the public diplomacy. With the boost of China's public diplomacy to Russia,China will successfully improve its national image, and a better Sino-Russian relationship will be created.