Soft Power: A Comparison of Discourse and Practice in Russia and China

Europe-Asia Studies
Vol. 67, No. 8, October 2015, 1171–1202
Soft Power: A Comparison of Discourse and

Practice in Russia and China
JEANNE L. WILSON
Abstract
This article compares soft power as a normative and operational construct in the Russian and Chinese political
context. I examine Russian and Chinese discourse on soft power as well as the efforts of the Kremlin and Beijing
to devise programmes for its implementation. I then compare and evaluate the similarities and differences in
Russian and Chinese soft power strategy. The similarities between the two states indicate their joint status as
authoritarian regimes with a Marxist–Leninist heritage. The differences can be attributed to their vastly disparate
economic circumstances, but also to historical, social, and political factors that influence soft power policies.
In the past two decades the concept of soft power has attained a global recognition, moving
beyond academia to emerge as an item of discussion and debate amongst policy analysts, the
popular mass media, and government leaders. This article seeks to compare soft power as a
normative and operational construct in the Russian and Chinese political context.1 To these
ends, I examine Russian and Chinese discourses on soft power as well as the efforts of the
Kremlin and Beijing to devise programmes for its implementation. I argue that the Russian
and Chinese leaderships share a number of commonalities in their approach to soft power,
which reflects to a considerable extent their joint status as authoritarian regimes with a com-
mon Marxist–Leninist heritage. This includes a preference for a state-directed approach to
realising soft power as well as a deep-seated antipathy for the role of autonomous civil soci-
ety structures, which are viewed not only as a threat to the regime but as a covert means for
Western actors to employ soft power as a strategy for infiltration and penetration of targeted
noncompliant states, including Russia and China.
1 The topic of Chinese soft power has received extensive attention amongst Western analysts. References—
both journalistic and academic—are too numerous to list but include, as examples, Kurlantzick (2007), Wang
(2008), Li (2009), McGiffert (2009), Lai and Lu (2012), and Shambaugh (2013). In contrast, Russian soft
power has been the subject of considerably less scholarly or journalistic interest. See, nonetheless, Hill (2006),
Tsygankov (2006, 2011, 2013a, 2013b), Feklyunina (2008, 2012), and Sherr (2013) for appraisals of soft
power in the Russian context.
ISSN 0966-8136 print; ISSN 1465-3427 online/15/300345–25 © 2015 University of Glasgow
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09668136.2015.1078108
1172 Jeanne L. Wilson
However, significant differences also exist in the means by which Russian and Chinese polit-
ical elites conceive of and seek to institute soft power. In part, these differences can be attributed
to the vastly disparate economic circumstances of the two states. Whether Russia is a declining
power may be a matter of debate, but it is clear that its financial resources do not match those of
China. The Chinese leadership possesses both the desire and the capability to institute a global
soft power strategy. Russian financial resources are considerably more constrained and have
been targeted largely for the post-Soviet region. Nonetheless, differences between the two states
are also attributable to factors of national identity that range beyond their shared experience
as Marxist–Leninist states. Russia is still struggling to come to terms with its lost identity as a
superpower as well as its effort over several centuries to define its relationship with the West.
The Chinese leadership’s tendency to stress soft power as a domestic construct employed to
strengthen Chinese cultural values reflects the historical proclivities of the Confucian past as
well as a more contemporary concern with a perceived vacuum of values in contemporary
Chinese society. After two decades of disavowing ideology in favour of a focused pragmatism,
the Kremlin—under the direction of Vladimir Putin—has recently begun to define sources
of Russian attractiveness in ideological terms, casting Russia as an exemplar of conservative
traditional values that are of universal appeal (although Putin’s message is largely directed to a
Western audience). In contrast, Beijing has been steadfast in its adamant rejection of China as
a universal model, a situation that serves to reaffirm Chinese exceptionalism.
This article adopts the following organisational format. First, I briefly discuss soft power
as a construct relying on Joseph Nye’s explication of the term. Secondly, I address the process
by which the Russian and Chinese leaderships came to endorse soft power as a regime goal
and the major points of discourse on the topic. The third part of the article discusses and
compares the similarities in the Russian and Chinese approach to soft power, both as a matter
of theoretical interpretation and practical application. Next, I turn to the differences between
Russian and Chinese soft power strategies, with a focus on identifying the key factors that
explain this divergence. The conclusion evaluates Russian and Chinese soft power policy as
a component of their foreign policy behaviour.
Soft power as a construct

The presentation of an attractive image has long been recognised as a factor contributing to
the ability of states to realise their goals in the international arena. This phenomenon is well
recognised amongst classical realists as an aspect of power, and is addressed in detail in the
works of Hans Morgenthau (1973) and E. H. Carr (2001). It is also well known to both Russian
and Chinese political elites as an element of people’s diplomacy as practised in the Soviet
Union and imported to China in the 1950s. The actual term, soft power, however, was first
coined by Joseph Nye (1990) and further developed in subsequent works, most notably Nye
(2004). In his latter publication, Nye famously described soft power as a means of seduction,
which rested on the ability to shape the preferences of others through cooptation rather than
threats or force. In Nye’s view, the soft power of a state derived from three resources: its
culture, its political values and its foreign policy. Nye subsequently expanded the parameters
of soft power resources; responding to criticisms that he had ignored economic capabilities as
a component of a state’s attractiveness, Nye admitted ‘economic resources can produce soft
power behaviour as well as hard’ (Nye 2011a, p. 52). He further pointed to the potential of
military power as a soft power resource, seen in instances of assistance and training projects
Soft power in russia and china 1173
(military education, disaster relief) and expanded his discussion of public diplomacy as a facet
of foreign policy. Nye further devoted a separate chapter to the elaboration of the concept of
‘smart power’, introduced in his 2004 work, which he defined as ‘the ability to combine hard
and soft resources into effective strategies’ (Nye 2011a, p. 22).2
Nye’s conception of soft power accords an important role to the state in communicating
domestic and foreign policy decisions, developing themes that present a desired national
image, and forging long term relationships at an individual level with foreign public figures
(Nye 2004, pp. 107–18; 2008). The state deliberately sets an agenda to shape preferences and
attain a desired outcome. Activities that fall within the domain of public diplomacy include
promotion of language, literature, and culture, state supported media, academic and educa-
tional exchanges, and foreign aid. However, Nye is simultaneously adamant in his insistence
that soft power is to a considerable—and indeed decisive—extent generated by resources
that are beyond the ability of the state to control, residing in the individual initiatives of the
private sector, citizens, and groups in civil society.
The appeal of soft power to Russian and Chinese political elites reflects their convic-
tion that traditional conceptions of power—largely measured in terms of military capa-
bilities—no longer fully describe the reality of interactions in the global arena, and are
consequently an inadequate guide to foreign policy behaviour. Both Russian and Chinese
discourse grudgingly acknowledges that the United States in particular has been able not
only to capitalise on its international reputation as a beacon of liberal values but also
to employ soft power tools to achieve its foreign policy goals. The global transmission
of soft power as a construct is in fact a testimony to the influence of American ideals,
the brainchild of a prominent academic and occasional government official. Russian
and Chinese discourse accepts Nye as the progenitor of soft power and its unquestioned
leading authority. Nonetheless, it is also the case that the construct of soft power as set
out by Nye is not wholly acceptable to Russian and Chinese political elites and has been
reinterpreted in the context of perceived national contingencies.
Chinese and Russian reactions to soft power: major themes

Chinese references to soft power can be traced back to the early 1990s, well before Russian
analysts began contemplating the term in any detail. Nye (1990) was published in Chinese in
1992 (Nye 1992), while Wang Huning, then an adviser to President Jiang Zemin (and currently
a member of the Politburo of the Chinese Communist Party—CCP) published the first article
in China discussing soft power in 1993 (Wang 1993). Thereafter, scattered references to soft
power appeared in Chinese scholarly journals in the 1990s, before increasing in scope and
volume in the 2000s. In contrast, soft power received little attention in the 1990s in Russia,
as academics struggled to survive in conditions of economic and social dislocation. Nye
(1990) has not been translated into Russian. The Eastview Universal Database, the largest
repository of journals and newspapers available in the Russian language, does not indicate a
reference to soft power until 2000.3
2 See also Armitage and Nye (2007).

3 The Eastview Universal Database is available at: https://dlib.eastview.com/. Soft power is almost always
translated into Russian (with variant case endings) as myagkaya sila, but occasionally, it is referred to as
myagkaya moshch’.
In the 2000s, however, discourse on soft power increased significantly in both China and
Russia, although the sheer volume of references to soft power in China far exceeds that of
Russia.4 This is, of course, in part a reflection of China’s larger population but it also indicates
the greater access to external resources enjoyed by Chinese academics and journalists relative
to their Russian counterparts.5 By the 2000s, moreover, Chinese and Russian government
officials began to make public references to soft power as a concept. The Chinese leadership’s
approach to soft power has been essentially linear, moving from cautious references to outright
endorsement. In 2006, CCP General Secretary Hu Jintao himself noted the importance of
increasing soft power in several venues (Hu 2006; Glaser & Murphy 2009, pp. 15–6). A study
session held for members of the Politburo in January 2007 was widely reported to have been on
the specific topic of soft power.6 The elevation of soft power as an official goal of the Chinese
state was symbolised by Hu’s inclusion of soft power in his speech to the 17th CCP Congress
in October 2007, in which he referred to soft power as a cultural construct noting that ‘we
must stimulate the cultural creativity of the whole nation, and enhance culture as part of the
soft power of our country to better guarantee the people’s basic cultural rights and interests’.7
In the Russian case, officials with a greater exposure to the West were the first to refer
to soft power. This list includes some figures regarded as pro-Western—such as the former
Economic Advisor to the President Andrei Illarionov—but it is by no means restricted to
political liberals. The Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has been a consistent advocate
of soft power. In 2007, a Foreign Ministry document publically called for the development
of a soft power strategy for Russia as a means of diversifying its foreign policy, suggesting a
greater reliance on cultural initiatives and the utilisation of non-governmental organisations
(NGOs) (Obzor vneshnei politiki 2007). By 2007, soft power had emerged as a topic of discus-
sion in the Duma, with Konstantin Kosachev, then the Chairman of the Duma Foreign Affairs
Committee, a vocal supporter of a soft power strategy for Russia (Rodin 2009). In February
2012, Putin—who previously had maintained a public silence on the topic—addressed soft
power in a 2012 election campaign article appearing in Moskovskie Novosti, providing a
nuanced endorsement, thus putting the Kremlin’s imprimatur on the concept. Putin presented
a dualistic assessment of soft power, on the one hand, recognising it as a legitimate tool of
foreign policy, if appropriately employed, but, on the other hand, criticising certain unidenti-
fied (but clearly Western) actors who made recourse to the ‘illegal instruments of soft power’
with the goal of destabilising other countries (Putin 2012a).
4 References to soft power can be accessed through the Chinese Academic Journal Database
and the Chinese Core Newspaper Full-Text Database, both maintained by the Chinese National
Knowledge Infrastructure (CNKI) database, located at the CNKI database which is available at:
http://ckrd85.cnki.net/kns50/Navigator.aspx?ID=1. There are four common Chinese translations for soft power:
ruan shili, ruan liliang, ruan guoli, and ruan quanli. The most popular variant is ruan shili.
5 Over the past several decades, Chinese publishers have translated a wide range of English language
sources, including those by Joseph Nye, with the consequent effect that the range of discussion of Western
academic theories is broader in China than in Russia. Of Nye’s major works only Nye (2004) has been trans-
lated into Russian.
6 In November 2002, the CCP Central Committee organised a series of 44 study sessions conducted by
leading academics for the members of the politburo. Three of the sessions were relevant to the topic of soft
power while one session, held in 2007, was reported to have been specifically devoted to soft power (Zhang
2010, pp. 388–89).
7 ‘Full Text of Hu Jintao’s Report at 17th Party Congress’, Xinhua News Agency, 24 October 2007, available at:
http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2007-10/24/content_6938749.htm, accessed 12 July 2015.
Russian and Chinese policy on soft power is not coterminous with the narratives of dis-
course in academic and media commentary. The latter is constructed for the most part against
the backdrop of government direction but is broader and more heterogeneous in scope. Russian
discussions of soft power evolved in the 2000s as a seemingly spontaneous development,
without any guiding direction by the Kremlin. The boundaries of censorship are considera-
bly more visible in China, as well as the existence of a well defined hierarchy that tends to
restrict the contemplation of sensitive or contentious topics to individuals and structures with
close ties to the CCP. Soft power as a construct, or more precisely, the means by which it is
interpreted, raises key issues of national identity with consideration to a series of interrelated
political, economic, historical, and cultural factors. Several key points can be briefly sum-
marised: Chinese commentary devotes considerable attention to examining soft power as a
theoretical construct, a topic of extremely limited interest in the Russian context; considerable
efforts have been made in both Russia and China to identify soft power resources as a facet
of national attractiveness; the CCP has concentrated attention on soft power as a domestic
as well as a foreign policy phenomenon, a preoccupation that is almost completely absent in
Russian discussions; both Russia and China contemplate the implementation of soft power as
a state-directed project although the Russian government acknowledges a limited sphere for
civil society organisations (in reality government organised non-governmental organisations
(GONGOs) that operate under the supervision of the Kremlin); and both states perceive of
the soft power strategy of the West—epitomised in the use of NGOs and the manipulation of
civil society organisations—as an ideological and ultimately existential threat.
Soft power: commonalities of the Russian and Chinese position

The Kremlin and Beijing share a convergent approach to soft power in several fundamental
aspects that reflect their joint status as authoritarian regimes with a Marxist–Leninist heritage.
In the first instance, both leaderships share the assumption that the state plays the dominant
role in developing a soft power programme that seeks to mobilise resources and develop pro-
grammes in the quest to exert a positive influence on an external audience. In some respects,
this view overlaps with Nye’s conception of public diplomacy, which identifies aspects of
state activities that consciously seek to create a positive image. While the term public diplo-
macy is of surprisingly recent vintage, developed by Edmund Gullion in 1965, the concept
has been a longstanding preoccupation of diplomatic activity.8 This aspect of soft power is
especially resonant for Russian elites, insofar as it bears distinct similarities to the extensive
efforts undertaken by the Soviet Union to promote its international image. Public diplomacy
(publichnaya diplomatiya) is a readily accessible concept in Russian, and is regularly invoked
by members of the Kremlin elite, including Putin himself, and specified as a practice in the
2013 Foreign Policy Concept (Ukaz 2012a; Kontseptsiya 2013).9 Chinese speakers have
struggled with the concept of public diplomacy, which has been more frequently translated
into Chinese as duiwai xuanchuan (external propaganda) than the more neutral term—to
Western ears at least—gonggong waijiao (public diplomacy) (Wang 2008, p. 259). In the
8 See, http://fletcher.tufts.edu/Murrow/Diplomacy, accessed 3 January 2013.

9 An alternative term for public diplomacy, less frequently employed, is ‘obshchestvennaya diplomatiya
(social diplomacy). Narodnaya diplomatiya (people’s diplomacy) has a narrower meaning which focuses on
people-to-people contacts.
2000s, however, Chinese leaders made substantive efforts to integrate public diplomacy into
their discourse and practice. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs established an Office of Public
Diplomacy in 2010, and the subject has become a topic of extensive discussion in academic
circles, as well as in the quarterly journal Public Diplomacy (Shambaugh 2013, pp. 210–11).
The Russian and Chinese leaderships’ conceptualisation of soft power, however, parts
company with Nye on the role of civil society in generating soft power. The Kremlin, unlike
Beijing, accepts the legitimacy of civil society as a construct. Nonetheless, as Putin (2006) has
noted: ‘civil society in Russia differs from civil society in the so-called traditional democra-
cies’. This conception of civil society indicates a pervasive fear of societal groups (especially
foreign associated NGOs) assuming an autonomous existence independent of state supervision
and control. But even this restricted view of civil society exceeds the parameters of CCP toler-
ance. While the Hu Jintao leadership acknowledged the importance of expanding the private
space between the state and society and expanding the activities of civic organisations, the
Xi Jinping leadership has moved in a more conservative direction. A document released to
CCP cadres in 2013 listed seven mistaken trends in the ideological sphere, including efforts
to propagate civil society in China, which was condemned as a Western social and political
theory that posed a threat to the position of the party in China.10
Soft power as a tool of state policy: developing programmes

In the 2000s, both Russia and China sought to develop programmes to enhance their
international image, efforts which have intensified in the wake of the formal endorsement
of soft power by both leaderships as a regime goal. In the past several years, the Kremlin
has worked to establish a specific soft power policy, that is set out in formal degrees,
as well as to centralise soft power programmes, many of which were envisioned to be
located under the supervision of a restructured Rossotrudnichestvo (the Federal Agency
for the Affairs of the Commonwealth of Independent States, Compatriots Living Abroad,
and International Humanitarian Cooperation). In comparison, Chinese soft power policy
is surprisingly decentralised, lacking a central mechanism for oversight. Whereas deci-
sion-making authority resides within the highest echelons of the CCP, or is delegated to
its leading small groups, details of implementation are allotted to various organisations
within the party and government. Considerable similarities exist, however, in the struc-
tural format of the soft power policy developed by the two states. It should be noted,
however, that while the Kremlin and Beijing have a largely congruent sense of what sort
of measures are most appropriate in devising a soft power strategy, significant differences
appear in the process by which programmes are implemented.11 Five measures, which
are generally regarded as standard indicators of soft power as a facet of state activity, are
examined here for purposes of comparison: the establishment of language and cultural
centres; the promotion of friendship associations; the enrolment of foreign students in
institutions of higher learning; dispersing forms of foreign aid; and efforts to develop an
international media presence.12
10
‘Document 9: A China File Translation’, China File, 8 November 2013, available at: http://www.chinafile.
com/document-9-chinafile-translation, accessed 5 January 2013.
11
Thus is discussed in the third section of this article.
12
Various forms of people-to-people diplomacy are common on a global basis, although the state-directed
friendship associations established by Russia and China trace their lineage to the Soviet Union.
Language and cultural centres

For its part, the CCP has maintained a steadfast commitment to the promotion of culture,
following upon the argument advanced by Wang Huning (Wang 1993) that identified culture
as the underlying source of Chinese soft power. The Kremlin similarly considers that Russian
language and culture are a key component not only of Russian identity but a source of its
national attractiveness. A major focus of both the Chinese and Russian governments has
been to promote language and cultural studies internationally. In the Chinese case, the well
known Confucius Institutes, and their affiliates, Confucius Classrooms, which operate under
the supervision of the Ministry of Education, are the main vehicle for the realisation of this
programme. In the Russian situation, language and cultural events are organised both through
Russian Centres of Science and Culture (RCSC) and Russkii Mir Centres and Cabinets. The
RCSC are a structural legacy of the Soviet Union (formerly known as the Soviet Centres of
Science and Culture) that the Kremlin is seeking to revive after two decades of inattention
and orient toward the post-Soviet space. In contrast to the RCSC centres, which are formally
affiliated with the Kremlin (under the direction of Rossotrudnichestvo), the Russkii Mir foun-
dation operates as a GONGO which pairs with host educational institutions on an interna-
tional basis to establish Russian centres, which house libraries, educational programmes and
presentations, and the smaller cabinets, which have access to few resources but maintain the
goal of promoting Russian language and culture. This has some structural analogies with the
Confucius Institutes, which typically (but not always) pair with institutions of higher learning
and Confucius Classrooms, which organise instruction in language and culture at the primary
and secondary school level.
Table 1 indicates the number and geographical distribution of Confucius Institutes and
Russkii Mir locations. These figures should be considered as approximate for both states. Nor
is it certain that all locations representing either country are actually operational.13 Since their
establishment in 2004, Confucius Institutes and Confucius Classrooms have expanded at a
rapid pace, reaching 501 institutes and 656 classrooms. This corresponds to 102 Russkii Mir
Centres and 130 Russkii Mir Cabinets, indicating that Chinese Institutes exceed the number of
Russian Centres by an approximate ratio of five to one. The geographical disparity in locations
is also notable. The Chinese government has focused on establishing Confucius Institutes
(97) and Confucius Classrooms (357) in the United States where Russia only has two Russkii
Mir Centres and one Russkii Mir Cabinet. Russia’s target audience is clearly located in the
post-Soviet space: 36% of Russkii Mir Centres and 21% of Russkii Mir Cabinets are located
in the emergent states of the former Soviet Union. This reflects the pre-existent educational
links with the CIS and Baltic states; but it also indicates the desire to maintain the influence
of Russian language and culture in the region, including amongst Russian compatriots. The
global orientation of China is clearly evident compared to Russia, with its efforts to set
up Confucius Institutes in sub-Saharan Africa (36 Confucius Institutes and no Russkii Mir
Centres) and South America and the Caribbean (32 Confucius Institutes and two Russkii Mir
Centres). The concentration of China on the United States, moreover, implies a conscious
strategy to make its presence felt amongst American citizens.
13
The Chinese government itself freely acknowledges that the vast expansion of Confucius Institutes has
strained the capacity of Hanban to establish coherent programmes (see Siow 2011).
TABLE 1
Number and Geographical Distribution of Confucius Institutes and Russkii Mir
Structures
Confucius Confucius Russkii Mir
Country/Region Institutes Classrooms Centres Russkii Mir Cabinets
Africa 36 9 0 5
Canada 13 18 0 0
CIS and Baltic states 25 7 35 28
(excluding Russia)
East Asia 58 31 17 22
Eastern Europe 23 10 17 19
Middle East 15 3 3 17
(including Turkey &
Afghanistan)
Oceania (Australia, 50 49 0 1
New Zealand and
Fiji)
Russia 18 4 6 0
South America and the 32 10 2 9
Caribbean
South Asia 7 5 0 0
United States 97 357 2 8
Western Europe 127 153 20 21
Total 501 656 102 130
Sources: ‘About Confucius Institutes/Classrooms’, Hanban, available at: http://english.hanban.org/node_10971.htm,
accessed 17 July 2015; ‘Katalog Russkikh Tsentrov’, Russkii Mir, available at: http://www.russkiymir.ru/rucenter/
catalogue.php, accessed 17 July 2015; Spisok Kabinetov, available at: http://www.russkiymir.ru/rucenter/cabinet_
list.php, accessed 17 July 2015.
Friendship associations
During the later years of the Medvedev presidency, Russia began taking steps to revive the
Soviet era friendship structures that had atrophied in the 1990s. This includes various forms of
people-to-people diplomacy including sister city agreements, the Russian Peace Foundation,
and most notably, the Russian Association of International Cooperation (Rossiiskaya
Assotsiatsiya Mezhdunarodnogo Sotrudnichestvo—RAMS) which incorporates within its
structure the organisation of friendship societies with foreign states. Although the CCP adopted
a number of Soviet style practices after 1949 in the realm of people’s diplomacy, such as
friendship societies and cultural exchanges, these structures largely ceased to function as a
consequence of China’s diplomatic isolation and the chaotic and intensely xenophobic policies
of the Cultural Revolution era. Subsequently, the Chinese People’s Association for Friendship
with Foreign Countries (Zhongguo Renmin Duiwai Youhau Xiehui) has concluded a number
of cooperative agreements including sister city relationships, cultural exchanges, and, in an
analogue to the Russian Peace Foundation, the Chinese Friendship Foundation for Peace and
Development. Table 2 indicates the number and geographical location of Russian and Chinese
friendship agreements concluded on a national basis with other states. The legacy of the Cold
War era is reflected in the bilateral relationships that both Russia and China have established
with individual states. China has five friendship agreements with Eastern Europe (established
in the late 1950s) but only two friendship agreements—Germany and Portugal—with Western
European states. Similarly, Russia has more linkages with Eastern European states than any
TABLE 2
Number and Geographical Distribution of Chinese and Russian Friendship Associations
with Foreign States
Country/Region China Russia

Africa 1 1
Australia 0 1
Canada 0 1
CIS and Baltic states 3 11
East Asia 13 11
Eastern Europe 5 12
Middle East (including Turkey & Afghanistan) 8 11
South America 1 4
South Asia 4 3
United States 1 1
Western Europe 2 15
Total 38 71
Sources: ‘Spisok Organizatsii vkhodyashchikh v sostav Rossiiskoi assotsiatsii mezhdunardonogo sotrudnichestva
(RAMS)’, Rossotrudnichestvo, available at: http://rs.gov.ru/spisok-organizaciy-vhodyashchih-v-sostav-rossiys-
koy-associacii-mezhdunarodnogo-sotrudnichestva-rams, accessed 17 July 2015; ‘Diqu he guo bie youxie’, Chinese
People’s Association for Friendship with Foreign Countries, available at: http://www.cpaffc.org.cn/introduction/lo-
cal.html, accessed 17 July 2015.
other geographical region, including the post-Soviet republics, whereas Russia lacks any
formal contacts with the Baltic states and Georgia. Despite China’s large-scale movement
into Africa, it has only one friendship association in the region, established with Sudan in
1995. During the first decade of the 2000s, as China was formulating a policy to increase its
international influence, it established only four friendship society associations, with Portugal
in 2000, Nepal in 2004, Brunei in 2006 and most recently, Iran in 2008. Table 2 indicates
that Russia has considerably more—71 to China’s 38—friendship associations than China.
Moreover, Russia is seeking to re-establish friendship associations with a number of states that
fell into abeyance with the Soviet Union’s collapse. While not entirely disavowing the use of
forms of people-to-people diplomacy, the CCP has exhibited far less interest in the practice
than the Kremlin, a tacit acknowledgement of the rather dated provenance of these measures.
Foreign students
It has long been recognised, as Nye (2004) emphasises, that various types of academic and
educational exchange serve to enhance a state’s soft power. International students tend to
acquire a positive appreciation of the country in which they have studied. The United States
has benefitted tremendously from this situation, especially as a number of foreign students
who enrolled in US institutions have gone on to become influential members of the political
elite in their home countries. This phenomenon was also well known to the Kremlin leadership
in the Soviet era. Deng Xiaoping and Ho Chi Minh ranked amongst the prominent alumni of
the Comintern-administered Communist University of the Toilers of the East. Four decades
later, the Kremlin leadership sought to attract a pro-Soviet generation of African leaders with
the founding in 1961 of Patrice Lumumba University. In the 1990s, the third generation of
Chinese leaders who had spent formative years studying in the Soviet Union in the 1950s,
took part in nostalgic celebrations with their Russian hosts.
For two decades after the collapse of the Soviet Union, the Kremlin largely lacked a policy
to draw foreign students to Russian educational structures, a lapse that it is now seeking to
redress. In 2012, senior government leaders decided to increase the number of foreign students
enrolling in Russian institutions, with an orientation toward the former Soviet republics as a
priority target. This was the topic of conversation at a September 2012 conference convened
by Rossotrudnichestvo where various prominent speakers advocated raising the number of
quotas available for foreign students in Russian institutes of higher learning, as well as
doubling the number of scholarships available to students from CIS states (Lavrov 2012).
Rossotrudnichestvo has been assigned a newly acquired authority to work—in conjunction
with the Ministry of Education and Science—to recruit students from the CIS states to study
in Russia. In 2013, the Ministry of Education and Science announced that it had raised the
quota of stipends for foreign students from 10,000 to 15,000 yearly. The Kremlin’s longer
term plan is to raise the percentage of foreign students in Russia from 2.3% to 10% (250,000
students) by 2018 (Panov 2013).14 In his December 2013 address to the Federal Assembly,
Putin (2013b) noted the need to speed up the adoption of a law that would allow Russian
universities to develop distance learning, aimed foremost at compatriots and residents of the
CIS states. A related aim is to strengthen the quality and competitive standards of Russian
higher education with the goal of placing at least five universities within the ranks of the top
100 global educational institutes by 2020 (Ukaz 2012b).
The political impact of the Ukrainian crisis, which has resulted in a steep decline in Russia’s
international reputation, has apparently been a factor, moreover, in the Kremlin’s present plan
not only to increase the number of international students on government stipend to 20,000
per year, but also to extend its recruitment base to students from Asia, Africa, and the Middle
East. A draft government decree sponsored by the Ministry of Science and Education, the
Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and Rossotrudnichestvo explains these measures as a means to
‘improve the efficiency of Russia’s soft power’ through the training of ‘pro-Russian national
elites’ who will return to promote Russia’s interests in their home countries (Chernykh &
Kiseleva 2015; Dolgov 2015).
In comparison to the Russian situation, the Chinese government has actively recruited
foreign students for a number of years, as seen in the steady increase of international students
dispersed among a myriad of Chinese educational institutions. The Chinese government’s
often articulated goal is to attract 500,000 international students to China by 2020 (West
2014). Unlike Russia, China has pursued a global strategy of creating multiple linkages,
establishing exchange programmes and cooperation agreements on a bilateral and regional
basis. A Sino–US agreement concluded in 2009 aims to bring 100,000 Americans to study
in China over a four-year period. The Chinese government has also increased its scholarship
support for citizens from developing countries, providing stipends to 36,943 students in
2014, or approximately 9.8% of total enrolled foreign students.15 Most recently, China has
set its sights on recruiting students from Central Asia, an activity that poses a direct threat to
Russian interests. Xi Jinping’s 2013 speech (Xi 2013a) in Kazakhstan that unveiled China’s
silk road initiative also included a section that promised that China would provide 30,000
14
‘Rossiya uvelichila kolichestvo besplatnykh stipentsii dlya inostrantsev’, UNIAN (Ukranian Independent
Information Agency), 10 September 2013, available at: http://economics.unian.net/soc/840144-rossiya-uveli-
chila-kolichestvo-besplatnyih-stipendiy-dlya-inostrantsev.html, accessed 22 July 2015.
15
‘2014 qian guo lai hua liu xuesheng shuzhu tongji’, China Association for International Education, available at:
http://www.cafsa.org.cn/research/show-1564.html, accessed 16 July 2015.
TABLE 3
Leading States of Origin for Foreign Students Enrolled in Soviet Institutions of
Higher Education in 1990–1991 (Thousands)
State Number
Mongolia 80.8
Vietnam 60.7
Afghanistan 60.1
Cuba 60.1
Bulgaria 50.4
Syria 50.0
Yemen 30.6
Ethiopia 30.5
Lebanon 30.4
Poland 20.0
Source: Aref’ev and Sheregi (2014, p. 12).
government scholarships to Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) residents as well as

inviting 10,000 teachers and students from Confucius Institutes to visit China on study tours
over the next ten years. As in Russia, Chinese officials are seeking to develop a network of
universities that are globally acknowledged as pre-eminent institutions.
Tables 3 to 5 present data on the number and site of geographical origin of foreign students
in Russia and China for selected years. Table 3 displays the major states of origin for foreign
students enrolled in Soviet institutions of higher education in 1990–1991. Table 4 indicates
the number of full time and distance learning foreign students, and their major states of origin
for the Russian Federation in the period 2011–2012. Table 5 presents the number of foreign
students enrolled in Chinese higher educational institutions, their geographical distribution,
and the leading sending countries for selected years from 2003 to 2014. Russian data indicate
the presence of 1,168.1 million foreign students in the Soviet Union in the period 1990–1991,
with 126,500 students enrolled in institutes of higher education, 89,500 of whom were study-
ing in the RSFSR (Aref’ev & Sheregi 2014, p. 15).16 Although the number of full time foreign
students arriving in Russia decreased notably in the 1990s, dipping to 52,600 in 1995–1996,
figures thereafter increased in the 2000s, reaching 125,541 in the 2011–2012 academic year
(Aref’ev 2012). Data from the Russian Federal State Statistical Service indicated 160,307
foreign students enrolled in Russian institutions of higher learning in the 2013–2014 academic
year, of whom 107,250 were full time students present in Russia.17
However, the geographical source of origin of foreign students has been signifi-
cantly transformed during this period. As Table 3 indicates, the Soviet Union largely
attracted students from states with which it had cultivated friendly ties, operating within
16
The higher figure includes foreign students engaged in a wide range of educational activities including
military academies and technical schools. In the Soviet (and Russian) case, these structures are distinguished
from the more academically orientated institutes of higher education, such as vyschee uchebnoe zavedenie (vuz).
17
‘Foreign Students Enrolment in Programs of Higher Education in Public and Educational Organizations
of Higher Education of the Russian Federation 2013/14’, Federal State Statistical Service, available at:
http://www.gks.ru/bgd/regl/b14_12/IssWWW.exe/stg/d01/08-12.htm, accessed 16 July 2015. The Russian
Statistical Service only provides data on foreign students from the CIS region, who are reported to comprise
47% of total foreign students enrolled in full time learning. Additional information that details a recent study
of foreign students conducted by researchers at Novosibirsk National Research State University was reported
in the 2 February 2015 edition of Vedomosti (Malykhin 2015).
TABLE 4
Foreign Students Enrolled in Full Time and Distance Learning in Higher Educational
Institutions in Russia: Major States of Origin 2011–2012 (Thousands)
2011–2012
Country Full time Distance learning Total
Kazakhstan 18,862 15,497 34,359
China 15,184 272 15,456
Turkmenistan 7,967 2,912 10,879
Tadjikistan 4,804 1,977 6,781
Ukraine 4,644 5,093 97,37
Uzbekistan 4,455 6,823 11,278
Belarus 4,387 24,366 28,753
Azerbaijan 4,353 4,937 9,290
India 4,167 7 4,174
Vietnam 3,895 175 4,070
Malaysia 3,083 0 3,083
Mongolia 3,022 164 3,186
Moldova* 2,851 2,779 5,630
Krygyzstan 2,536 1,212 3,748
Armenia 2,257 1,631 3,888
USA 1,965 54 2,019
Other states 31,283 2,214 33,497
Total 125,541 70,113 195,654
Note: *Includes Transdniestr region of Moldova.
Source: Aref’ev and Sheregi (2014, pp. 43, 51–2).
a patron–client relationship that included a full subsidisation of educational expenses. In

the 1990–1991 academic year, Mongolia, Vietnam, Afghanistan, Cuba, Bulgaria, and Syria
respectively ranked as the states that sent the greatest number of students to study in the
Soviet Union. The data in Table 4 indicate that the vestiges of these former relationships
endure, but foreign students in Russia are currently heavily drawn from the former Soviet
republics (whereas students from these regions would formerly have been included as
Soviet citizens in statistical data). Also notable, however, is the large number of students
from China (who typically concentrate in institutes in the Russian Far East), the pres-
ence of a large contingent of students from Malaysia, and the continued representation
of students from Mongolia, India, and Vietnam. In fact, as Table 4 notes, China ranked
second after Kazakhstan in the number of full time foreign students enrolled in Russian
institutions in the year 2011–2012.
A further notable aspect of the Russian educational system is indicated by the large number
of students from the CIS states who are involved in forms of distance learning. Whereas more
than 99% of all foreign students in the 1990–1991 academic year were enrolled in full time
courses and physically located in the Soviet Union, approximately 43% of all foreign students
in the 2011–2012 academic year were enrolled in forms of distance learning. Moreover, over
97% of these students were located in the CIS states. Belarus alone accounted for over one
third of all foreign distance learning students, followed by Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Ukraine,
and Azerbaijan (Aref’ev & Sheregi 2014, pp. 50–3). The expansion of forms of distance learn-
ing is an explicit goal of the Russian government, which views it as a means of maintaining a
cohort of Russian language speakers in the CIS region, as well as strengthening linkages with
TABLE 5
Enrolment of Foreign Students at Chinese Institutions of Higher Education, their
Regional Distribution, and the Leading States of Origin Selected Years 2003–2014
Region/
Country 2003 2006 2008 2011 2014
Total 77,715 162,695 223,499 292,611 377,054
Regions
Africa 1,793 3,737 8,799 20,744 41,677
Americas 4,703 15,619 26,559 32,333 36,140
Asia 63,672 120,930 152,931 187,871 225,490
Europe 6,462 20,676 32,461 47,271 67,475
Oceania 1,085 1,733 2,749 4,392 6,272
Leading countries of origin
India – 5,634 8,145 9,370 13,578
Indonesia 2,563 5,632 7,084 10,957 13,689
Japan 12,765 18,363 16,733 17,961 15,057
Kazakhstan – 1,825 5,666 8,287 13,360
Korea 35,353 57,504 66,806 62,442 69,293
Pakistan 598 3,308 5,199 8,516 11,764
Russia 1,224 5,035 8,939 13,340 17,202
Thailand 1,554 5,522 8,476 14,145 21,296
USA 3,693 11,784 19,914 23,292 24,203
Vietnam 3,487 7,310 10,396 13,549 10,658
Sources: ‘Qian guo lai hua liu xuesheng shuzhu tongji’, China Association for International Education, 2003, avail-
able at: http://www.cafsa.org.cn/research/show-1262.html, accessed 16 July 2015; ‘Qian guo lai hua liu xuesheng
shuzhu tongji’, China Association for International Education, 2006, available at: http://www.cafsa.org.cn/research/
show-1265.html, accessed 16 July 2015; ‘Qian guo lai hua liu xuesheng shuzhu tongji’, China Association for In-
ternational Education, 2008, available at: http://www.cafsa.org.cn/research/show-198.html, accessed 16 July 2015;
‘Qian guo lai hua liu xuesheng shuzhu tongji’, China Association for International Education, 2011, available at:
http://www.cafsa.org.cn/research/show-195.html, accessed 16 July 2015; ‘Qian guo lai hua liu xuesheng shuzhu
tongji’, China Association for International Education, 2014, available at: http://www.cafsa.org.cn/research/show-
1564.html, accessed 16 July 2015.
the compatriot population. However, the proliferation of forms of distance learning, some
of which are promoted by private institutions with dubious credentials, has contributed to
a lowering of educational standards and the discrediting of Russian diplomas in the region
(Aref’ev 2005; Aref’ev & Sheregi 2014).
As Table 5 indicates, China attracted over 377,000 foreign students in 2014, a figure that
is more than three times that of Russia’s full time foreign student enrolment. The majority
of foreign students in China arrive from Asia (constituting 68% of the total in 2014), with
South Korea consistently ranked in first place. However, the distribution of foreign students in
China is more geographically dispersed than in Russia: Table 4 indicates that 1,965 students
from the United States studied in Russia in the 2011–2012 academic year; this compares
with 23,292 students from the United States enrolled in Chinese educational institutions in
2011–2012. Similarly, relatively few students from Western Europe select to study in Russia.
Although China is increasingly a major destination for African students, with an astonishing
growth rate of over 1,500% between 2003 and 2014 (from 1,793 to 41,677 students), Russia
continues to attract African students, a reflection of the Soviet legacy. The data indicate that
7,856 African students were enrolled in Russian institutions in 2011–2012 (Aref’ev & Shegeri
TABLE 6
Russia and Chinese Foreign Aid 2005–2013, Selected Years
2005 2007 2009 2011 2013
China 900m 1.5b 1.9b 2.5b 6.6b
Russia 101.3m 210.8m 785m 479m 523m
Notes: $US; m—millions; b—billions.

Source: Global Humanitarian Assistance, available at: http://www.globalhumanitarianassistance.org, accessed 15
July 2015.
2014, p. 72). It is notable, moreover, that more Russian students select to study in China
(17,202 in 2014) than Chinese students (15,184 in the 2011–2012 academic year) enrol in
Russian academic institutions.
Two decades after the collapse of the Soviet Union, Russia has managed to retain a
sizable foreign student population. In fact, Russia attracts more foreign students than
China as a proportion of its overall population, ranking third internationally on this
dimension, after the United States and Australia (Aref’ev & Sheregi 2014, p. 23). Russian
science and mathematics programmes continue to be considered reputable but foreign
students overwhelmingly choose to study in Russia as a pragmatic decision, driven by
issues of cost. In fact, that is the same motivation that has induced Russian educational
institutions to accept, if not necessarily welcome, them. As Aleksei Fominkh notes: ‘It is
difficult to judge the effectiveness of the use of foreigners who enrol in Russian higher
educational institutions as a resource of “soft power”’ (Fominkh 2008 p. 82). Relative to
China, Russia in currently engaged in an effort to catch up and to implement international
practices in enrolling foreign students as a component of a soft power policy. China has
spent well over a decade in the construction of a sophisticated network of linkages that
project it as a leading destination for international students, an endeavour that is woe-
fully underdeveloped in Russia. Russia’s ability to continue to attract foreign students,
while making negligible efforts, implies that a more directed programme, which is now
apparently being constructed, can yield effective results.
Foreign aid
Foreign aid is generally considered as an important tool of soft power policy, although as Nye
himself notes, there is not necessarily a causal linkage between its dispersal and the generation
of attraction amongst the population (Nye 2011a, pp. 76–80). The very definition of what
constitutes foreign aid is controversial as well as the means of its measurement. Both Russia
and China lack transparency in their public accounts of the various forms of international
assistance that they provide. Calculations of Russian and Chinese dispersals according to
Official Development Assistance (ODA) data (or, in the Chinese case, assessments that seek
to conform to the criteria used by ODA in making calculations) suggest that both are modest
donors: Table 6 reports that China contributed $6.6 billion and Russia $523 million in foreign
aid in 2013. These figures, however, do not capture the total foreign aid profile for either state,
and far underestimate the extent of Chinese donor activities in particular.
In 2011, the Chinese government released its first White Paper on Foreign Aid that
provided far more explicit information about Chinese developmental assistance than was
previously available (Duiwai Bangju 2011). The paper distinguishes between types of
foreign aid and the means by which it is dispersed. According to the White Paper, 41% of
Chinese aid consisted of grants, 30% was allocated to interest free loans and 29% of its
funding took the form of low interest concessional loans, totalling as of the end of 2009,
about $39.3 billion. In 2009, 45.7% of Chinese aid went to Africa, followed by a 32.8%
share of aid that was given to Asia. The White Paper on Foreign Aid also contains two
appendices (III and IV) that detail past and future Chinese development goals in Africa. A
follow up document released in 2012 indicated that China had provided one billion yuan
($161,293,030) for emergency humanitarian assistance (Yuanwai 2012). However it is
calculated, it is clear that China has been heavily involved in Africa. Although Chinese
aid to Africa is undoubtedly intended to buttress its economic presence on the continent,
the Chinese propensity to build large-scale infrastructure projects—perhaps most dramat-
ically the construction of football stadiums for the African Cup—provides a highly visible
reminder to millions of Africans of its largesse (Will 2012). One effort to construct a data-
base of Chinese aid projects to Africa counted almost 1,000 projects totalling $48.6 billion
under way or completed (Provost & Harris 2013).
In the Soviet era, the Soviet Union was a major aid donor, spending about 1.5% of its
economic output abroad: this amounted to about $26 billion in 1986 alone.18 This situation
was sharply reversed during the years of the Yel’tsin presidency when Russia became a net
recipient of foreign aid. The Putin presidency has been determined to redress this point of
national humiliation. With the recovery of the Russian economy in the 2000s, Russia began
to provide foreign aid in modest amounts, as Table 6 indicates. A 2007 paper released by
the Foreign Ministry dealing with the participation of the Russian Federation in interna-
tional development assistance noted that an enhanced foreign aid policy would help to
promote a ‘belt of good-neighbourliness’ along its borders’ (Kontseptsiya 2007). In 2011,
moreover, the Russian government adopted a proposal to establish a Federal International
Development Agency to supervise developmental assistance. This plan, however, was
superseded by the announcement in September 2012 that identified Rossotrudnichestvo
as the major structure entrusted with the task of coordinating and directing the dispersal
of foreign aid. Numerous speakers at the September 2012 Rossotrudnichestvo conference
spoke of the need for Russia to move away from its characteristic reliance on multilateral
means of dispersing aid in favour of bilateral projects that clearly identified Russia as the
donor. As of 2012, in fact, almost 87% of Russian humanitarian aid was channelled through
multilateral organisations, with the World Bank the largest recipient (Brezheva & Ukhova
2013, p. 2). To these ends, the May 2013 directive on the activities of Rossotrudnichestvo
signed by Putin called for more than $500 million in aid funding, formerly assigned to
multilateral projects, to be diverted to bilateral projects targeted toward the post-Soviet
space. As Konstanin Kosachev, the head of Rossotrudnichestvo, has noted: ‘we are trying
to develop a model, which will allow us to realise each ruble of investment to be invested
in several components that will be useful both for the state that is receiving it and for the
image of Russia’ (Chernenko 2013).
18
‘Foreign Aid from Russia Growing, Public Ambivalent’, Moscow Times, 14 February 2011, available at:
http://www.themoscowtimes.com/news/article/foreign-aid-from-russia-growing-public-ambivalent/430891.
html, accessed 22 July 2015.
Promoting international media

In the 2000s, both Russia and China sought to expand their international media presence. For
the Chinese this venture has been interconnected with its plans to establish a cultural industry
as a pillar of the economy that will have both a domestic and an international component.
Russian efforts to expand its international media (sharply reduced relative to the Soviet era)
began with a commitment to portraying Russia to international audiences but evolved to focus
on presenting the Russian perspective in a wider dimension on international events. The range
of activities that Russia and China engage in are similar but China is pursuing a far more
ambitious programme of global media penetration. The Chinese state-owned news infor-
mation agency, Xinhua, maintains 109 foreign bureaus, compared to the 68 foreign bureaus
maintained by Tass, the Russian state news agency.19 Both Russia and China have longstand-
ing international radio services: Sputnik Radio (formerly The Voice of Russia) transmits in
32 languages; China Radio International broadcasts in 62 languages.20 Russia Today—now
renamed as RT—provides television coverage in six languages (Russian, English, Arabic,
Spanish, German, and French) while its Chinese analogue, CCTV, transmits programmes
in seven languages (English, Russian, Arabic, Spanish, French, Korean, and Chinese). In
addition, Xinhua News Agency launched CNC, an English language channel in 2010. Both
RT and CCTV (as well as CNC) have sought to employ their programmes on a variety of
platforms, including the internet, cable services, satellite transmissions, and YouTube. Both
Russia and China, moreover, publish newspaper supplements (Rossiiskaya Gazeta and China
Daily) in leading international newspapers.
Although RT broadcasts in Arabic, it is largely oriented toward a Western audience. Its
website claims that RT is available to more than 120 million people in Europe and 85 million
viewers in North America.21 China’s goal, in contrast, has been to expand its influence on a
global scale, although with particular attention directed to Africa and the United States. CCTV
Africa, with headquarters in Kenya, began operations in 2011, followed by the launching of
CCTV America, based in Washington, DC, in 2012. This has been accompanied by a number
of other initiatives, including a CNC English language channel and an English language news-
paper targeted for an African audience. Symbolic of its intent to establish a firm foothold on
the African continent, Xinhua moved its regional offices from Paris to Nairobi in 2006, and
Chinese media outlets have penetrated throughout the continent in the past decade.
China’s extensive efforts to increase its global media footprint are rooted in the conviction
that cultural predominance is a major path to the exercise of global influence, as well as a
sense that China’s global presence is not proportionate to its position as a leading interna-
tional actor. As Li Changchun, then a member of the Standing Committee of the Politburo
with responsibility for Propaganda and Ideological Work, noted in 2008: ‘Communication
capacity determines influence. In the modern age, whichever nation’s communication methods
are most advanced, whichever nation’s communication capacity is strongest, it is that nation
19
‘Guo jing wai feng zhi ji gou’, Xinhua News Agency, available at: http://203.192.6.89/xhs/zwfs.htm,
accessed 15 July 2015; ‘Today Today’, TASS, available at: http://www.tass.ru/en/today, accessed 15 July 2015.
20
See Sputnik Radio, available at: http://sputniknews.com/docs/about/index.html, accessed 15 July 2015;
and China Radio International, available at: http://english.cri.cn/11114/2012/09/21/1261s723419.htm, accessed
15 July 2015.
21
‘RT Distribution’, RT, available at: http://rt.com/about-us/distribution/, accessed 14 July 2015. Jill
Dougherty (2014a, p. 20) notes that these claims are highly inflated.
whose culture and core values are able to spread far and wide, and that nation that has the
most power to influence the world’ (Li 2008).22 Chinese commentary also tends to convey
another implicit assumption; that money can buy influence irrespective of the appeal of the
cultural product. Nonetheless, in an area of cutbacks and retraction for Western media sources,
China stands out for its ambitious programmes. In 2012, Xinhua operated 106 foreign bureaus
compared with 37 for the BBC and 42 for CNN (Yu 2012). The Chinese government has far
more ambitious future plans, seeking to expand its media presence from 57 to 100 states by
2016, along with a ten-fold increase in staffing (Branigan 2010).
Since December 2013, Putin has been overseeing a major reorganisation of Russian media
outlets with significant domestic and international implications. The impetus for these efforts
appears to be rooted in the perceived need to centralise and strengthen controls over the media
and ensure that it delivers a Kremlin-approved message. In the first instance, a 9 December
2013 directive signed by Putin specified the liquidation of RIA Novosti news agency, transfer-
ring its property and functions to Russia Today (Rossiya Segodnya). Simultaneously the Voice
of Russia lost its status as a separate entity, to be reconfigured as a component of Russia Today.
Several weeks later Dmitry Kiselev, a highly controversial figure known for his bombastic and
anti-Western remarks, was appointed the director of the reconstituted agency. Although these
actions were partially explained as a cost cutting measure, the underlying goal also appears
to be a desire to reorient Russian media transmissions toward the international realm. The
plans involve a significant reduction in the regional offices maintained by RIA Novosti—from
69 to 19—with the redirection of the mission to target an international audience (Tetrault-
Faber 2014). In this sense, the reconfiguring of Russia Today is a component of a soft power
strategy to explain Russian motivations to the external world, or in the words of Kiselev, the
restoration of ‘a fair attitude toward Russia, an important country in the world that has good
intentions’.23 This message also consciously involves, as Russian directives have indicated,
the promotion and defence of ‘traditional values and humanitarian views’ (Biryukova et al.
2014).24 The priority given to the international transmission of the Kremlin’s message at the
cost of domestic coverage suggests a desire to challenge the predominance of Western media
outlets such as CNN and the BBC. This effort bears a resemblance to Chinese goals to make
use of international media platforms to promote a Chinese perspective, but the Kremlin is
deliberately more provocative than Beijing in the broadcasting of its message.
As Putin has tightened his gripe over Russian society, however, Russian political structures
have moved more closely to approximate Chinese practice. One reason for the dissolution
of RIA Novosti, headed by the well respected Svetlana Mironyuk, was that the agency was
apparently insufficiently partisan in its coverage. Subsequent commentary in the Russian
press, for example, has criticised the agency as a foreign mouthpiece, which failed to rep-
resent the interests of the state (Fedorov 2013; Markov 2014). Dmitry Peskov, Putin’s press
attaché, reaffirmed this perspective when he noted that ‘the tool of propaganda is an inte-
gral part of any state. … And Russia should use it well’.25 Similar attitudes are entrenched
amongst Chinese officials, the efforts of reformists notwithstanding. As Hu Zhanfan, the newly
22
See also Ren (2012).
23
‘Istoriya Agenstva’, RIA Novosti, no date, http://ria.ru/docs/about/ria_history.html, accessed 8 July 2014.
24
See also Dougherty (2014b).
25
‘Russia Needs More Propaganda, Putin Spokesman Says’, Moscow Times, 20 December 2013, available at:
http://www.themoscowtimes.com/news/article/russia-needs-more-propaganda-putin-spokesman-says/491881.
html, accessed 3 January 2014.
appointed president of CCTV noted in a 2012 speech: ‘Journalists who think of themselves
as professionals, instead of as propaganda workers, are making a fundamental mistake about
identity’ (Jacobs 2012).
The dualistic nature of soft power: soft power as a method of Western subversion
Both the Kremlin and Beijing adhere to a dualistic appraisal of soft power, which simulta-
neously appraises it as a positive feature of a state’s foreign policy or an insidious tool of
domestic penetration and subversion, depending on the mode of implementation. Both lead-
erships are acutely aware of their existence as outliers in an international system dominated
by the hegemonic norms and values of the West. Russian and Chinese political elites concur
that Western actors have often resorted to soft power tools as a substitute for a traditional
reliance on military capabilities in their quest to maintain their pre-eminent position in the
global arena. This signifies a transfer of the struggle for power to the ideological sphere
with the end goal the conversion of noncompliant states—such as Russia and China—to the
Western model of liberal democracy. The tools employed in this quest include democracy
promotion, the utilisation of the mass media, the cultivation of targeted domestic groups
(especially the mobilisation of youth) and the creation of NGOs. Many of these practices
conform to Western efforts to construct an autonomous civil society rooted in an appreciation
of liberal democratic norms and values. From the perspective of the Kremlin and Beijing,
however, this amounts to a Western funded and orchestrated effort at regime change. As
one Chinese assessment put it: ‘NGOs are an instrument that the Western states like to use.
They are a “Trojan horse” planted by the Western intelligence agencies’ (Pan & Dai 2005,
p. 78). Both the Kremlin and Beijing interpreted the outbreak of Colour Revolutions in the
post-Soviet space in the 2003–2005 period as an indication of Western attempts to use soft
power methods, capitalising on the charge of rigged elections, as a means to effect a regime
change (Wilson 2009; White & Lane 2010). Although the Chinese assessment concurs with
Russia that ‘Western liberalism invaded Ukraine’ (Tian & Jia 2014), the CCP has been more
preoccupied with the outbreak of pro-democracy demonstrations in Hong Kong, which have
been identified as indicative of the ‘black hand’ of the United States, and its use of NGOs (that
is, the National Endowment for Democracy and the Soros Foundation) to seek to destabilise
Hong Kong, and by extension, China (Zhan 2014).
The joint perception of Russia and China that they are potential targets of Western
efforts at regime change is not entirely a paranoid fantasy. Western actors, especially the
United States, have engaged (with selective application and various degrees of energy
and commitment) in programmes of democracy promotion, especially in the post-Soviet
space, and advocacy of adherence to universal principles of human rights (especially
irritating to the CCP). The characterisation of Western practices of soft power as a threat
pervades Russian and Chinese discourse on the topic, and is routinely expressed by the
top echelons of the leadership: Hu Jintao’s (2012b) warning that hostile foreign powers
are using methods of soft power to seek to Westernise and divide China is analogous to
Putin’s (2013a) assessment that Russia faces attempts to weaken its influence through
the use of so-called soft power mechanisms. In marked contrast to the generally low key
and cautious profile that China presents to the external world, assessments of the West
designated for internal consumption assume a strident and confrontational tone, which
tends to demonise the United States in particular. The CCP often exhibits something
close to an obsession with the potential for ideological infiltration, which is interpreted
as a deliberate strategy of Western actors. This mandates an eternal vigilance against the
penetration of Western values. As the 2013 document circulated to party cadres notes:
‘Western forces hostile to China and dissidents within the country are still constantly
infiltrating the ideological sphere’.26 The seven identified perils—in addition to civil
society—that threaten China include Western constitutional democracy, universal values,
media independence, market neoliberalism, nihilist criticisms of the CCP, and a lack of
commitment to socialism with Chinese characteristics. Russian discourse on the threat
posed by the West tends to be less ideologically framed and more focused on the West’s
superior ability to marshal financial resources and manipulate soft power ‘technologies’.
But the Kremlin is also exceedingly wary—if not obsessed—with the corrosive danger
of NGOs as carriers of ideological influence. As Putin noted in an April 2014 speech to
the Federal Security Bureau, Russia would not allow for NGOs to be used for the sort of
destructive ends that occurred in Ukraine (Putin 2014).
Soft power as a construct: the Chinese and Russian readaptation of Nye

Russian and Chinese scholarly discourse on soft power has not generally challenged the
fundamental precepts of Nye. His work has received extensive attention in China but the
resulting discussions have typically been highly formalistic and abstract, descriptive rather
than analytical, and rarely moving into the realm of policy proposals.27 Russian analysts, on
the other hand, have been almost wholly indifferent to a critical examination of the works of
Nye.28 Nonetheless, the interpretation of soft power by the Russian and Chinese leaderships
amounts in practical application to a reconstruction of Nye’s analysis. A central issue of
divergence is the role of civil society as a source of soft power as well as a component of a
soft power strategy.
The Kremlin is more open to the use of NGOs—in reality GONGOs—operating abroad
than the Chinese and has established several organisations, notably the Gorchakov Public
Diplomacy Fund and the Russian Council on International Affairs, which seek to engage civil
society institutions in humanitarian and cultural ventures abroad. In a March 2014 interview,
Kosachev provided an unusually candid appraisal of the shortcomings of Russian policy in
Ukraine, noting that its soft power programmes had paid insufficient attention to grass roots
organisations in its focus on business and elites (Khimshyashvili 2014). But the Kremlin,
no less than Beijing, abhors the notion of civil society as an autonomous entity that exists
independently of state direction and control. Both leaderships, moreover, share a deep-seated
scepticism as to the possibility of the functional existence of civil society independent of the
state, which leads them to view the soft power strategies of Western actors not as efforts to
develop an autonomous civil society as a prerequisite of democratisation but as a deliberate
attempt to manipulate societal structures to achieve their own foreign policy goals.
26
‘Document 9: A China File Translation’, China File, 8 November 2013, available at: http://www.chinafile.
com/document-9-chinafile-translation, accessed 5 January 2013.
27
See, for example, He et al. (2005), Xu and Wu (2008).
28
A notable exception is the late Yuri Davydov, a long time academician at the Institute of the USA and
Canada, who published several articles on soft power as a component of international relations theory in the
mid-2000s (Davydov 2004, 2006, 2007).
For his part, Nye has been increasingly vocal in criticising the Russian—and especially
the Chinese—approach to soft power. Nye has explained soft power as a descriptive rather
than a normative concept, which allows for the possibility that authoritarian states, or even
thoroughly despotic states (such as Hitler’s Germany, Maoist China, the Soviet Union in the
Stalin era) can possess formidable reserves of soft power (Nye 2011a, p. 81). In practice,
however, Nye’s presentation of soft power is rooted in neoliberal assumptions regarding
the legitimacy of the norms and institutions in the contemporary international system, and
the superiority and consequent allure of Western style democracy. According to Richard
Ned Lebow: ‘Nye takes it for granted that the American way of life is so attractive, even
mesmerizing and the global public goods it supposedly provides so beneficial, that others
are predisposed to follow Washington’s lead’ (Lebow 2005, p. 522). Nonetheless, Nye has
been highly critical of the extent to which the Kremlin and Beijing have been resistant to
the development of a vibrant autonomous civil society as a source of soft power. ‘China and
Russia make the mistake of thinking that government is the main instrument of soft power’
(Nye 2013).29 Secondly, Nye parts company with Russia and China in his insistence that ‘the
development of soft power need not be a zero-sum game’ (Nye 2013). As Andrei Tsygankov
has noted, Nye’s understanding of soft power is rooted in the assumption that soft power
can encourage cooperation and less competition between states (Tsygankov 2013a, 2013b).
This reflects Nye’s longstanding commitment to principles of neofunctionalism and complex
interdependence as a means of international cooperation as well as his personal commitment
to liberal values. But this perspective is fundamentally at odds with the Russian and Chinese
view that the soft power methods of the West indicate the continued primacy of struggle as
a defining feature of interactions within the international system.
Russian and Chinese soft power strategy: key factors of divergence

The Russian and Chinese approach to soft power exhibits a fundamental convergence that
indicates their existence as autocratic states that consciously reject the legitimacy of prevailing
international norms and values set by Western actors. In this sense, the Kremlin and Beijing
are bound together by a shared legacy of adherence to Marxism–Leninism that constitutes
an important—but by no means the only—facet of their national identity. At the same time,
Russia and China have distinctive political, cultural, and social histories and patterns of
interacting with external actors that shape their soft power policy. In part, the differences
in the Russian and Chinese approach to soft power can be attributed to China’s far greater
capacity to marshal resources to implement an ambitious programme that is global in its
scope. But Russian and Chinese political elites are engaged in an evolving process of creating
a soft power programme that reflects embedded assumptions about national identity. As a
reflection of its Confucian heritage, China places more attention on culture as a determinant
aspect of soft power than Russia, a preoccupation that extends into the domestic sphere. The
CCP moreover, still exhibits a historical tendency toward Sinocentrism that posits not just
the superiority but also the unique characteristics of China, a policy that impedes its promo-
tion as a model for emulation. After two decades of determined pragmatism and a conscious
rejection of ideology, Putin has recently moved in a different direction, seeking to cast Russia
29
See also Nye (2011b, 2012a, 2012b).
as a defender of ‘enlightened conservatism’ and an attractive alternative to the decadences of

Western liberal norms and values.
Crafting a soft power policy: the issue of money

Russia and China employ a similar set of programmes as a component of their soft power
strategy. These reflect a propensity for state orchestration, but also conform to programmes
commonly adopted on a global basis (that is, promotion of the national language, foreign
aid). However, even the most cursory comparison indicates the vast difference between Russia
and China in the implementation of these measures. The Chinese Gross Domestic Product
(GDP) is rapidly approaching the level of the United States, an achievement that has been
possible through years of double digit growth rates. Although Chinese growth has slowed, the
Chinese economy still grew by 7.4% in 2014 (Yao & Sweeney 2015). In contrast, Russia’s
GDP is approximately one-fifth that of China, and its economy has been adversely affected
by the economic sanctions imposed by the European Union and the United States after the
Russian annexation of Ukraine. The Russian economy grew by 0.6% in 2014, but shrank
2.2% in the first three months of 2015.30 As a result, China is pouring literally billions of
dollars into efforts to enhance its national image; Russia, in contrast, operates its soft power
programmes on a shoestring budget. China’s soft power strategy is global, with its myriad
programmes extending to every continent; Russia’s efforts are largely regional oriented toward
the post-Soviet space.
It is beyond the scope—and the ability—of this article to calculate total Chinese spending
on soft power initiatives. But it is clear that the Chinese government has embarked on a major
effort to promote its message and extend its global influence abroad. This is a multifaceted
project that posits the export of cultural products as a national industry in addition to linking
targeted areas of penetration to Chinese economic interests (as in the exploitation of raw
materials in Africa). At the same time, geostrategic goals underlie efforts to develop Confucius
Institutes, as well as to establish a media presence in the United States. A dizzying accumu-
lation of figures attests to the sheer scale of this programme: estimates are that the CCP is
spending between $7 and $10 billion to promote an international media presence (Branigan
2010; Yu 2010); another $10 billion to establish Confucius Institutes (Jensen 2012, pp. 272,
280), with over $48 billion allocated to aid projects for Africa alone (Provost & Harris 2013).
This is accompanied by the recruitment of hundreds of thousands of foreign students to China
(over 377,000 in 2014) and the targeted increase in scholarships. These measures not only
dwarf Russia’s soft power programmes, but they also eclipse those of the United States. In a US
Congressional Senate Hearing in 2011, then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton acknowledged
that ‘we are in an information war and we are losing that war’ (Warrick 2011).
In the last few years, the Kremlin has worked to develop a systematised and coherent soft
power strategy focused on Rossotrudnichestvo as the main structure to implement or coordi-
nate programmes in the CIS region. The appointment of Kosachev, the former Chairman of
the Duma Foreign Affairs Committee, to head the Rossotrudnichestvo in the spring of 2012
signalled a new prominence for the agency. Kosachev served as an articulate and candid
voice in promoting soft power as an important foreign policy strategy for Russia. In the past
30
‘Russia’s GDP Annual Growth Rate’, Trading Economics, 15 June 2015, available at: http://www.trad-
ingeconomics.com/russia/gdp-growth-annual, accessed 14 July 2015.
20 years, the Russian presence in the CIS region has declined markedly, with both Western
states and China (notably in Central Asia) increasing their influence in the area. The number
of Russian speakers globally has fallen precipitously, largely because young people in the
newly emergent former Soviet republics no longer learn the language: whereas 312 million
people spoke Russian in 1990; only 260 million people had the facility in Russian in 2010
(Aref’ev & Sheregi 2014, p. 19).
The decision to concentrate the limited resources that Russia can devote to implementing
a soft power policy toward the CIS region is undoubtedly in the Russian national interest
(a goal that is shared consensually by Russian analysts across the political spectrum). Plans
to increase the number of RCSC centres with a focus on the CIS region (where they did
not exist in the Soviet era as constituent Soviet republics), to recruit and subsidise more
students for university education, and reorient foreign aid toward the post-Soviet states hold
the potential to revive the diminished historical ties that link the area to Russia. Nonetheless,
Russian budget data indicate the existence of serious constraints on the implementation of a
soft power strategy. The truth is that Russian policy looks better on paper than as a matter of
empirical application. Whereas China is committing billions of dollars in a quest to improve
its image, Russia’s expenditures on its major soft power programmes are at best modest, but
more realistically spartan. Russian allocations to individual programmes are calculated in the
millions, not billions, of dollars with its foreign aid budget (a recorded $523 million in 2013)
apparently the largest single expenditure. As Kosachev has noted, Rossotrudnichestvo is a
‘limousine without gas’ (Reznik 2013). In 2013 Rossotrudnichestvo’s budget comprised 2.19
billion rubles (approximately $64.3 million); Russkii Mir was allocated 500 million rubles
(approximately $1.47 million); and RT’s 2013 budget was 11.31 billion rubles (approximately
$332 million).31 Both RT and the newly constituted Russia Today received a sharp increase in
funding in 2014 with RT allocated $445 million and Russia Today $250 million. Nonetheless,
both media outlets were subjected to approximately a 50% reduction in their budgets in 2015
as a consequence of Russia’s worsening economic situation, with RT projected to receive
about $236 million and Russia Today around $100 million (d’Amora 2015).
These allocations leave agencies directed to institute soft power programmes deprived of
the financial means to do so in an effective manner. After the Soviet collapse a large number
of the RCSC centres ceased operations; only those located on physical property owned by
the Russian Federation survived. Even so, current estimates are that 80% of these centres
operate in substandard conditions, often performing only perfunctory functions (Kosachev
2012; Lavrov 2012). Russian statistical data confirm the low status of the agency; the level
of its wages ranks 83 out of 85 state structures (Chernenko 2014). In these conditions, as
Kosachev continuously reiterated, Russia is ill placed to compete with Western soft power
programmes in the region. In 2012 the USAID budget allocation for Ukraine, for example, was
almost two times more than Rossotrudnichestvo’s total 2012 revenues (Khimshyashvili 2014).
Russia: following up on the Soviet footprint

In certain respects, the Russian approach to crafting a soft power policy bears the indelible
footprint of the Soviet legacy. A number of plans underway to enhance Russia’s image fol-
low—whether consciously or unconsciously—upon the Soviet experience, emphasising the
31
‘Kak Rossiya uluchshaet imidzh za rubezhom’, Kommersant’’, 10 December 2013.
reconstitution of Soviet style friendship associations and cultural exchange programmes. This
includes the re-establishment of a House of Friendship with the Peoples of Foreign Countries
in Moscow and preparations to sponsor an international youth festival in Moscow in 2017,
modelled after the events held in the Soviet Union in 1957 and 1985. A key component of
Russian soft power policy rests on plans to revive and expand the RCSC centres, a structural
inheritance of the Soviet Union, relying upon Rossotrudnichestvo, which has explicitly been
identified as the contemporary reincarnation of the Soviet era Union of Socialist Societies for
Cultural Relations with Foreign Countries (SSOD).32 In fact, portraits of its former directors
hang today in Rossotrudnichestvo’s headquarters (Dougherty 2013, pp. 30–1). As Dmitri
Trenin has noted: ‘they have just discovered the need to do soft power. And they’re grappling
with it. … When I read what Rossotrudnichestvo is doing, … it’s just unashamedly Soviet’
(Dougherty 2013, pp. 52–3).
Russia’s recourse to Soviet style practice is more than an example of the enduring legacy
of the Soviet era. It also indicates its lack of financial capabilities to make alternative choices.
Even in the 1950s, the Chinese adaptation of Soviet style methods of people’s diplomacy was
undeveloped, constrained by its diplomatic isolation. But Beijing, relative to the Kremlin,
enjoys the ability to select far more technologically sophisticated measures in its efforts to
project a positive image. This is clearly seen in Africa, for example, where Beijing has virtually
ignored the establishment of friendship associations (although it established the Forum on
China Africa Cooperation which can be viewed as a sort of soft power project) in favour of
the commitment of billions of dollars to various development initiatives and the expansion
of a media presence throughout the continent.
Soft power as a domestic construct: the case of China

While Nye contemplates soft power as a tool of foreign policy, the Chinese treatment of soft
power tends to conflate soft power as simultaneously a component of domestic and foreign
policy. This approach has received almost no attention in Russia, with the Kremlin conceiving
of soft power as an aspect of a foreign policy strategy.33 A predominant theme of Chinese
discourse, however, is to identify soft power as a domestic construct. Specifically, the Chinese
leadership has extended its interpretation of culture as a primary source of soft power into
the domestic sphere. This is not simply to identify culture as a source of soft power. More
to the point, the dominant impetus of policy is to strengthen cultural soft power. Countless
CCP directives in the past decade have promoted this theme, including the promulgation of
an ambitious programme of cultural reform and the establishment of a culture industry as a
pillar of the economy. The emphasis on cultural reform and the imperative need to strengthen
cultural soft power implies at a minimum that Chinese culture is in need of revitalisation. In
fact, as Shambaugh (2013, pp. 213–14) has noted, a number of eminent scholars with close
ties to the CCP lament the crisis of values in contemporary Chinese society, and the presence
of an intellectual and moral crisis. The perception that Chinese society has been afflicted by a
32
The SSOD was reconstructed in the Yel’tsin era as Roszarubezhcentre, replaced in 2008 by the estab-
lishment of Rossotrudnichestvo. Rossarubezhtsentr lost possession of the famous Morozov mansion in 2004,
the home of the House of Friendship with Peoples of Foreign Countries. The building currently serves as a
reception facility for the Russian government.
33
One exception is an article by P. N. Khromenkov (2012) that refers to ‘soft power’ management tech-
nologies in higher education.
crisis of values is a consequence of the lingering legacy of the tumultuous years of the Cultural
Revolution, the social dislocation caused by several decades of rapid growth, and the virtual
demise of Marxist–Leninist ideology as a guiding force for actions.
Chinese commentary typically presents culture as a component of national strength
and competitiveness, a view that is in accord with Nye’s treatment of soft power. In this
sense, cultural reform is a necessary precondition to improve China’s image internationally.
Nonetheless, Chinese discourse on soft power is often essentially devoid of a foreign pol-
icy element—such as, the soft power of marine biology, enterprise management, financial
services—that indicates that the concept has become in many instances detached from its
theoretical mooring. Moreover, the emphasis of strengthening cultural soft power raises an
inevitable question: if Chinese culture is perceived as defective in certain measures to the
Chinese leadership, and in need of substantive improvement, why should it present an attrac-
tive image to an external audience?
The sources of soft power: Chinese exceptionalism

In the last decade, Beijing has committed billions of dollars to promote Chinese culture
abroad, but the ideological component of this venture has been decidedly modest and does
not challenge the supremacy of Western norms and values. Chinese commentary tends to
adopt a Confucian sensibility in its emphasis on themes of morality and dedication to the
construction of a harmonious world as a source of national attraction. These characteristics,
moreover, are consciously presented as an antidote to the individualist ethos of the West. The
appropriateness of China as an economic model, meanwhile, is hotly debated within Chinese
intellectual circles. This discourse has been intertwined with the controversy over the ‘Beijing
Consensus’ (Beigong), a concept of American origination that argues that Beijing’s emphasis
on government direction of the process of economic development provides superior outcomes
to the much maligned Washington consensus (Cooper 2004). The reluctance of the Chinese
government to promote its economic performance as a source of national attraction—which
would be especially appealing in the developing states—has typically been attributed to a
desire to avoid upstaging the United States, and a reflection of the CCP’s goal to maintain
a low profile and avoid controversy (Glaser & Murphy 2009). The CCP has assiduously
avoided presenting China’s political or economic system as a model to anyone, but rather
has continuously reaffirmed its commitment to global diversity, deliberately removing China
from a position of global emulation. As the Foreign Minister, Yang Jiechi, stated in 2011:
‘China has no intention of exporting its ideology and values to any country’ (Yang 2011). Xi
Jinping reiterated this message in 2013 while visiting Africa: ‘there is no universal model of
development in the world’ (Xi 2013b). Xi’s harnessing of soft power to the promotion of the
‘Chinese Dream’, which projects the national rejuvenation and development of the Chinese
state, further stresses the unique (dute) charm of China (Xi 2014). This orientation of the CCP
goes beyond a reluctance to challenge the United States as a global hegemon, inasmuch as it
simultaneously indicates the influence of traditional themes that are deeply rooted in Chinese
conceptions of national identity. These include a Sinocentric view of China’s relationship
to the rest of the world, which emphasises the grandeur and superiority of Chinese culture
and civilisation (present doubts notwithstanding). These assumptions also contribute to the
CCP’s tendency to present China as an exceptional state, a characterisation that might well be
appealing in the Chinese domestic context but is less likely to find resonance with an external
audience. In short, the CCP soft power strategy raises the question as to what qualities China
possesses that are of universal appeal.
Enlightened conservatism: Russia’s emergent soft power message

For most of the first decade of the 2000s, Russian discussions about the sources of soft power
indicated an acute and painful awareness of the demise of the Soviet Union as an ideological
model and a respected source of scientific and technological achievement as well as military
prowess. The default position was to emphasise the achievements of Russian culture, and
especially the promotion of the Russian language, although there was some doubt as to whether
the achievements of imperial Russian high culture—as expressed in music, ballet, literature,
and art—would be attractive on a global basis. A prevalent view was that Russia possessed
at best extremely limited soft power resources and at worst none at all. As Aleksander Lukin
noted: ‘Today’s Russia does not offer anything—apart from its mineral resources—that would
deserve at least some interest. … Its soft power, non-aggressive attraction, and moral and
ideological influence have dropped to zero’ (Lukin 2008, p. 59).34 In the last several years,
however, Putin has injected a new ideological note in Russian discourse, casting Russia as bul-
wark of traditional conservative values. While Putin’s 2012 Address to the Federal Assembly
acknowledged that Russia suffered from an ‘apparent deficit of spiritual values’, he revised
his position significantly in the next year (Putin 2012b). His September 2013 Address to the
Valdai Discussion Club and his December 2013 Address to the Federal Assembly both eulo-
gised the virtues of Russian civilisation as a form of ‘enlightened conservatism’ in marked
contrast to the decadent morality of the West (Putin 2013b, 2013c). In positing Russia as a
defender of the sort of enduring values ‘that have made up the spiritual and moral founda-
tion of civilisation in every nation for thousands of years’, Putin explicitly promoted Russia
as a global model with universal appeal (although his target audience is in fact largely the
West). Subsequent Russian media coverage has not been as intent on developing enlightened
conservatism as a theoretical construct as much as extolling Putin as a moral leader who
represents the interests of millions of global citizens, offended by political correctness, and
the degradation of religion and family values: ‘Putin is celebrating the triumphant return
of our state to European civilization—and not as an uninvited quest, but in the sense of its
approaching liberator’ (Mezhuev 2014).35
The Kremlin’s new found emphasis on the transmission of an ideological message as
a component of its soft power policy marks a notable departure from the emphasis on
pragmatism—in itself a conscious rejection of the Soviet heritage—during the first two
decades of the Russian Federation. Putin remains in many ways a Soviet man in terms of
his assumptions and attitudes regarding Russian society and its place in the world, but his
evolving interpretation of Russia as a bastion of traditional conservative values incorpo-
rates a number of themes that date back to Tsarist Russia and are reflective of perennial
questions of Russian national identity. Whereas Chinese political elites traditionally
assumed the unquestioned superiority of Chinese culture in contrast to the barbarian other,
their Russian counterparts were wrestling with a legacy of backwardness and presumed
34
See also Latukhina and Glikin (2005, p. 1), Rudakov (2009, p. 26).
35
See also Mironov (2014), Vezhin (2014).
inferiority relative to the advanced West. But a strain of Russian intellectual discourse
also stressed Russia’s moral and spiritual superiority, a theme that Putin has resurrected.
Putin, along with numerous other political elites, has accumulated a long list of grievances
regarding the behaviour of the West since the establishment of the Russian Federation.
These extend from the perceived violation of an agreement not to expand NATO, and the
construction of missile defence systems in the former Warsaw Pact states, to the encour-
agement of Colour Revolutions within the post-Soviet space, and most recently, Western
support of the overthrow of the Yanukovich presidency in Ukraine.
The Kremlin’s promotion of Russia as a source of traditional conservative values posits
Russia as an ideological alternative to the prevailing Western liberal hegemony. The Putin
leadership is deliberately—and provocatively—seeking to appeal to conservative forces in
the West, with some success. Russia’s invocation of conservative values has found favour
amongst members of the European right wing, as well as opponents of the European
Union who have been supportive of Russia’s position on Ukraine (Kanevskaya 2014;
Kreko 2014). Even some conservatives within the United States, including the political
commentator Pat Buchanan, have praised Putin for his implementation of anti-gay legisla-
tion and defence of religious values (Young 2013). Although the increasing identification
of Russia’s civilisational mission with Christianity and the Russian Orthodox Church in
particular might be seen to constrain the scope of the Kremlin’s message, Russian soft
power policy still aspires to project Russia’s adherence to ‘enlightened conservatism’ as
a source of global appeal.
Conclusion
According to Nye, a state’s foreign policy, broadly conceived, is in itself a source of soft power
(or its absence) (Nye 2011a, p. 84). Russian foreign policy behaviour under Putin, however, has
not shied away from direct confrontation (at least in the verbal realm) with the West. Following
a longstanding Soviet trend, Putin has apparently considered it more important for Russia to
be respected than to be liked, or alternatively to believe that the projection of strong leadership
is a necessary component of a positive national image. Nonetheless, the Kremlin understands
that the Russian annexation of Crimea was a public relations disaster. The Russian leadership’s
justification of the event as a defence of Russian compatriots strained international credibility
as well as the Kremlin’s standard mantra of respect for state sovereignty and non-interference
in the internal affairs of other states. Not even the Chinese (fearful of lending legitimacy to
independence movements on their own soil) could bring themselves to support the Russians in
the draft resolution condemning the Crimean referendum to unite with Russia in the Security
Council, rather opting to abstain. In March 2014, Kosachev acknowledged that foreigners
perceived Russia as ‘unpredictable and aggressive’, and that it would take years for Moscow
to rectify this misperception (Khimshyashvili 2014). Speaking at a meeting of the heads of
missions of Rossotrudnichestvo in July 2014, Lavrov noted that the events in Ukraine had
led other actors to ‘take unprecedented measures to discredit Russian politics and distort the
image of our state’ (Lavrov 2014). The same meeting announced the further development of
work on a soft power doctrine to be presented to Putin, which emphasised the importance of
explaining the Russian position abroad (Chernenko 2014).
Russia’s soft power programme has undoubtedly been dealt a heavy blow by the negative
fallout—with its consequent international and domestic consequences—resulting from the
Ukrainian crisis. The Kremlin has intensified its proclivity to use the Russian media as a
platform to identify the deficiencies of Western behaviour rather than promote a positive
image for Russia. Shrinking budgets impede the ability of Rossotrudnichestvo to implement
planned programmes or even maintain current initiatives. The status of Rossotrudnichestvo
was further undermined by the December 2014 resignation of Kosachev who assumed a
new position as head of the Federation Council’s Committee for International Affairs. His
successor, Lyubov Glevova, comes to Rossotrudnichestvo with a background in education
management—an emergent priority for the agency—but lacks Kosachev’s national stature.
The reasons for Kosachev’s resignation are unclear, but his dissatisfaction with the low levels
of funding for the agency was apparently a factor in his departure (Galimova 2014).36
In comparison to the Kremlin, Chinese foreign policy since the onset of the reform era
in 1989 has been based on the premise, attributed to Deng Xiaoping, of ‘hiding one’s talents
and biding one’s time’ (taoguan yanghui) (Kawashima 2011). The Chinese leadership has
demonstrated an almost unyielding commitment (except on matters that are perceived to
impinge of core questions of geographical sovereignty such as Taiwan, Tibet, and several
disputed island chains) to maintain a low profile in the international system, ensuring a envi-
ronment conducive to the pursuit of economic development. This has increasingly been a
point of debate, and even contention, within the higher echelons of the CCP leadership, with
a number of individuals arguing that China needs to adopt a more assertive foreign policy. In
fact, the CCP has continuously stressed, in its implementation of soft power measures, that
China’s international presence is not commensurate to its status as a rising power. As with
their Russian counterparts, the Chinese leadership also expresses a sense of grievance that
China is misunderstood, if not demonised, as a conscious tactic by Western actors (Shambaugh
2013, pp. 262–66).
Russia and China are bound together by their status as authoritarian states that share a
common Marxist–Leninist legacy. This is seen in their conception of the state as the orches-
trator of a consciously developed soft power programme, which delegitimises the potential
role of an autonomous civil society as a source of soft power. The ideological framework of
Marxism–Leninism continues to reverberate as well in their shared appraisal of the soft power
tactics of the West as an updated expression of its imperialist ambitions. It would be difficult
to overestimate the extent to which the Kremlin and Beijing consider the West, mobilising soft
power tactics, to pose an existential threat. For Putin, the events in Ukraine were not simply a
foreign policy issue. They also indicated a potential scenario that could be replayed in Russia
(especially insofar as the outbreak of political demonstrations in Moscow and other selected
cities in 2011–2012 indicated the vulnerability of the regime). In the Chinese situation, the
Xi Jinping leadership has so far dashed the hopes of reformist elements with its reversion to
a hard line ideological position that seeks to buttress Chinese society against the penetration
of external—that is, Western—influence.
As Gilbert Rozman (2014) has noted, Russia and China have a common national iden-
tity deriving from their shared Communist heritage. But at the same time the Russian and
Chinese approach to soft power differs in significant aspects indicating the impact of their
distinct historical, cultural, and political circumstances. Another component of variance in
36
Interview with Elena Chernenko, head of the foreign desk at Kommersant’’, Moscow, 29 June 2015.
Russian and Chinese soft power programmes is the economic disparity between the two
states, which exercises a determinative influence (at least in the case of Russia) on the scope
and range of soft power programmes. The Chinese preoccupation with culture as an element
of soft power and the recasting of soft power as a domestic construct indicates a traditional
preoccupation with culture as a facet of national identity. Also evident is the leadership’s
conviction that China is culturally unique (even in comparison to its East Asian neighbours),
a feature that inhibits Beijing in its attempts to identify sources of universal appeal (Rozman
2012; Shambaugh 2013, pp. 210–16).
Kremlin officials associated with developing a soft power policy are burdened by the
knowledge that their ‘geopolitical competitors’ are far ahead of them in the game, and are
able to benefit from a sizable head start—measured in decades—in the implementation of soft
power programmes (Chernenko 2014). The biggest problem, however, is financial. Russian
soft power programmes are woefully underfunded and its structures are compelled to battle
with other government bureaucracies over the allocation of limited funds. Under these cir-
cumstances, Putin’s new found ideological message of enlightened conservatism provides
certain benefits. It is cost effective, in the sense that it can be transmitted through Russian
media outlets to a global audience. It provides an ideological message, and thus partially
fills the void left by the demise of the Soviet Union. Simultaneously, the appeal to traditional
conservative values reflects a longstanding concern of Russian national identity, which can be
promoted as a facet of national attractiveness to an international audience. The overall appeal
of this message is of yet untested and notably anathema to the spirit of Nye’s conception of
soft power. In this sense, however, Russia is moving, in distinct contrast to China, to cast an
ideological challenge and provide an alternative model to the prevailing Western hegemony
on the construction of norms and values in the international system.
Wheaton College
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Europe-Asia Studies

Vol. 67, No. 8, October 2015, 1171–1202

Soft Power: A Comparison of Discourse and

Soft power as a construct

Chinese and Russian reactions to soft power: major themes

2 See also Armitage and Nye (2007).

Soft power: commonalities of the Russian and Chinese position

8 See, http://fletcher.tufts.edu/Murrow/Diplomacy, accessed 3 January 2013.

Soft power as a tool of state policy: developing programmes

Language and cultural centres

Country/Region China Russia

Source: Aref’ev and Sheregi (2014, p. 12).

government scholarships to Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) residents as well as

a patron–client relationship that included a full subsidisation of educational expenses. In

Notes: $US; m—millions; b—billions.

Promoting international media

Soft power as a construct: the Chinese and Russian readaptation of Nye

Russian and Chinese soft power strategy: key factors of divergence

as a defender of ‘enlightened conservatism’ and an attractive alternative to the decadences of

Crafting a soft power policy: the issue of money

Russia: following up on the Soviet footprint

Soft power as a domestic construct: the case of China

The sources of soft power: Chinese exceptionalism

Enlightened conservatism: Russia’s emergent soft power message

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