The Rise of China's Strategic Soft Power and its Global Impact

EXPERT PERSPECTIVE – The United States is currently mired in a cycle of aggressive trade renegotiations and a transactional foreign policy that has alienated its most critical allies. By perceiving partners as free riders on American defense investments, Washington is increasingly defaulting to raw financial and military coercion, or hard power. While cultural attraction remains a core Western strength, this shift toward transactionalism is allowing the global power balance to tilt decisively in China’s favor.

China has successfully evolved from the world’s manufacturing engine into an innovation powerhouse, with massive investments in research and development now yielding strategic dividends. The old adage, "USA innovates, China replicates, Europe regulates," is being rendered obsolete as Beijing takes the lead in high-tech research, dominates renewable energy supply chains, and weaponizes its monopoly on rare earth materials. This is not just a technological shift; it is the foundation of a new form of systemic influence.

By the Numbers

Soft power, the ability to influence through attraction rather than coercion, is now a primary battleground for Beijing. In its 2010-2015 5-Year Plan, China explicitly identified cultural products like computer animation, books, and social media as strategic priorities, and is expected to spend over $10Bn per year. Today, that strategy is manifest in TikTok, where international audiences are fed a curated diet of technological wonders and friendly diplomacy, while the domestic version (Douyin) remains strictly regulated. This curated reality leverages Western influencers paid to travel to China to marvel at bullet trains and flying cars, effectively masking the tightening grip of government control and persistent domestic poverty.

The silver screen has become a frontier for this historical revisionism. The evolution of Oriental Dreamworks illustrates the point: after the original Kung Fu Panda sparked national soul-searching in China over why a Western studio told their story better, Beijing forced a co-production model. This ensured that subsequent global hits, like The Abominable, which sparked international backlash for including the nine-dash line, served as vehicles for Chinese territorial and cultural narratives. Similarly, the success of The Three-Body Problem on platforms like Netflix signals a shift from passive consumption to the strategic export of techno-optimism, reshaping how the West perceives China’s past and future.

Lately one of China’s most potent soft power assets, however, is its strategic silence. In a world defined by shock events, from the 2025 Indo-Pakistani conflict to the Venezuelan raids to arguing over Greenland, Beijing projects a calculated lack of surprise. While United States foreign policy is viewed as an erratic series of active disruptions, China markets itself as a pillar of stability. By refusing the role of global savior, Beijing avoids the inevitable backlash of interventions while presenting its intentions, most notably regarding Taiwan, as historic certainties rather than chaotic ruptures. This perceived predictability is the velvet glove that makes its authoritarian consistency look like a safe harbor for global markets.

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The change in soft power execution (or lack thereof), both by the United States and China, has yielded quantifiable results. A 2025 Pew Research Center survey of 28,000 adults shows the favorability gap between Washington and Beijing closing fast. Even inner circle partners are decoupling: in Australia, importance placed on economic ties with China (53%) has eclipsed the U.S. (42%) for the first time. In Canada, reeling from American rhetoric regarding annexation and the Greenland crisis, favorability for the United States plummeted from 87% to 67%. Spain, Mexico, Brazil and Argentina all view the United States as their highest threat, while the United Kingdom, France, Netherlands, Germany and Sweden think of the United States as their second highest threat, only surpassed by Russia. When the world’s most stable democracies begin to view the United States as a greater threat to their sovereignty than China, the global architecture of power has already moved.

This erosion between the United States and its NATO allies is precipitating a tangible financial and geopolitical divorce. As European pension funds signal a pivot toward non-American assets and gold to hedge against United States volatility, Washington has resorted to hard-power retaliation, to counter rising interest costs on its own federal debt, but risks further alienating allies. This shift is giving rise to a Western middle-power bloc, where leaders from Canada to the U.K. are bypassing United States hegemony to secure autonomous ties with Beijing, most recently shown in a Canadian trade deal with China, and London approving a new embassy before their prime minister is set to visit China next month.

The Domestic Crisis of American Soft Power

The United States faces a disadvantage in this competition that is as much internal as it is external. While cultural attraction remains a Western strength, America is stuck in a cycle of political division and a pervasive internal culture war. This domestic fragmentation has direct geopolitical consequences, creating a soft power deficit by eroding internal stability and the reliability that allies previously took for granted. When a superpower’s domestic policy is defined by institutional distrust and crippling polarization, its foreign policy becomes erratic, swinging violently between administrations and leaving partners to wonder if today’s agreement will survive tomorrow’s election.

In this climate, Washington is increasingly defaulting to financial and military coercion, hard power, to maintain influence. By viewing alliances through a purely transactional lens, the United States signals that its leadership is no longer based on shared values, but on momentary leverage.

The Authoritarian Impact of the Chinese Model

Conversely, China’s authoritarian system provides a strategic soft power advantage by ensuring internal dissent never detracts from international ambitions. While the United States is distracted by internal quibbling over social issues, Beijing’s centralized control allows it to project a facade of unwavering stability and consistency. The CCP’s absolute control over society prevents political in-fighting from slowing its global expansion.

This marketed reliability is a powerful tool. To many developing nations, the Chinese model, which prioritizes state security and economic growth over the perceived chaos of liberal democracy, looks increasingly attractive. China is expertly using this image to mask the reality of structural debt traps and economic coercion they have expertly laid in the Global South, particularly in Africa and Central Asia.

However, this is also China’s greatest weakness. Democratic values, such as a free press, labor rights, data and public privacy and private ownership are values where the West, and America in particular, still is attractive and acts as a magnet. While China might be a partner, they might not be a role model.

A Collision Course with an Existential Vacuum

The Transatlantic alliance is now on a collision course with an existential power vacuum. If the West fails to move past aggressive theater and nurture shared security architectures, it will cede the century to a model that demands compliance in exchange for short-term financial benefits.

For any nation flirting with realignment toward China, the warning is stark: China offers immediate liquidity, but demands a level of sovereign collateral that eventually leaves the partner more vulnerable than it was before the investment began, as Lithuania’s experience with economic sanctions has shown. Old alliances between America and Europe should not be so quickly forgotten. All indications are that Chinese soft power, backed by an undistracted authoritarian state, could eventually be followed by hard power.

Soft power should not be discarded so quickly. There is strength in a shared Western cultural heritage that attracts nations precisely because it avoids totalitarianism. However, if America cannot find a way to resolve its internal dissent and project a unified front, it risks losing the very American Example that once served as its greatest global asset, and part of its allies with it.

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