Soft Power

What changes minds, governments, behavior? The idea that a trainer can get a horse to do something by using a carrot that rewards or a stick that hurts translates into soft power and hard power. In international relations, hard power takes the form of tanks, bombs, drones, assassinations, prison sentences, torture, and economic sanctions. Soft power can defeat an enemy without firing a shot or sending anyone to a dungeon.

     Young men from Loyola University in Chicago, Illinois, began kicking a soccer ball around in Andahuaylillas, Peru. Children heard the familiar sound and joined them. Adults came to watch and some also joined the game. The Loyola students were in a program exploring the way sports can be used as a means of youth and community development. Communities determined to prevent gangs from destructive activity during summer vacations can beef up policing and arrests or they can work with businesses to provide summer jobs and with parks to leave the lights on for midnight basketball games.

     Why were a female music group, a Ukrainian filmmaker, and a blogger sent to Russian prisons and penal colonies? Why are Hong Kong book sellers in Chinese prisons? Authoritarian states recognize the soft power of music, film, social media, and books to overthrow repressive governments.

     Fashion, video games, educational systems like Montessori or Suzuki, and ethnic foods also spread values and cultural influence.

     Of the millions of people who have visited Disney theme parks, few have noticed the employees dressed as costumed characters when they enter or exit the park. The doors they used are in dim, uninviting alcoves away from the fun, excitement, and bright lights designed to entertain visitors.

     The bottom line is: recognize the impact, influence, and power of soft power.

(You can find additional information about the influence of films and soft power in the earlier posts: "You Oughta Be in Pictures" and "What Moscow Could Learn from History."

   

Hong Kong Update

 In January, 2016, protesters again took to Hong Kong's streets, when booksellers and publishers of books that often feature sex stories of Communist Party leaders disappeared. Under the Basic Law that has governed Hong Kong ever since the UK returned the island to Chinese control in 1997, Hong Kong has enjoyed freedoms of speech not granted on the Chinese mainland. The Basic Law governing Hong Kong as one of China's special administrative regions also barred Chinese legal authorities from exercising jurisdiction over Hong Kong's courts, a power that Chinese political pressure seems slowly to be undermining.

     Ten weeks of pro-democracy demonstrations ended in Hong Kong on December 11, 2014, when police cleared the streets and arrested activists in what came to be called the Umbrella Movement. Initially, young activist leaders, Joshua Wong, Nathan Law, and Alex Chow, were sentenced to community service. On August 17, 2017, an appeals court changed what was considered too light a sentence to up to eight-month prison terms that also bars them from running for office for five years. They were released on bail in October, 2017.
 
      As this 2005 photo shows, democracy protests in Hong Kong are not new, but there's been a
shift from violent confrontations with the police. Proponents of non-violent civil disobedience began calling for a new strategy to maintain the democratic measures they expected in 1997.

     Under the terms of the UK's accord with China, the Chief Executive of Hong Kong was to be elected by universal suffrage. John Tsang was the popular choice for Chief Executive in Hong Kong's April, 2017 election, but the electoral college chose Carrie Lam in order to accommodate China, which had announced it would select acceptable candidates to run in the 2017 election.

     During the peaceful 2014 protest demonstration, Roman Catholic Cardinal Joseph Zen was among the Occupy Central non-violence supporters who tried to turn themselves into Hong Kong's Central Police Station on December 3, 2014. They were neither charged nor arrested for an illegal protest. The police told them their protest was illegal and asked them to fill out forms providing personal information. The police did not want the Central Station to attract more protesters who wanted to be arrested and, therefore, to become another center for occupation.

      Given heavy censorship and spin on the news, Beijing controls how Hong Kong's protests are portrayed as illegal and influenced by foreigners. It has been said that the mainland Chinese are not sympathetic with Hong Kong protests, because they feel people in Hong Kong already enjoy more freedoms than they do. (For additional information about current affairs in China and Hong Kong, see the earlier blog post, "Let's Visit China.")