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China’s 60th Anniversary, its Rise in Soft Power and ICT Standardisation

posted by Heejin Lee on Wednesday, October 7th, 2009 at 4:55 am

Last Thursday 1st October People’s Republic of China celebrated its 60th anniversary. On the celebration march in the Tiananmen Square, China showed its new weaponry, the majority of which are ‘indigenously’ developed and shown for the first time to the world. Thereby China demonstrated its hard power in increase. However, what we should pay more attention to is China’s recent rise in, and its commitment to, soft power.

For example, China provides a huge amount of overseas aid*. By the end of 2005, China had given economic and technical assistance to 53 African countries and completed 769 projects which included infrastructure building such as roads and dams. Chinese official development assistance (ODA) to African countries continues to grow. By April 2009, some 326 Confucius Institutes had been established in 81 countries to spread China’s cultural influence throughout the world. Another area is media. It is also reported that a huge amount of money will be pumped into key news organizations (including the launch of an international news channel) to strengthen China’s international influence through these media. All these initiatives culminated in, and at the same time started anew from, the successful Beijing Olympics.

China’s ICT standardization policies have been discussed only in ICT sectors and in the regime of international standardization. Discussions on China’s ICT standards should be made in a broader context, i.e. that of the Rise of China, particularly as soft power. Some infrastructure built by China’s aid money may be related to telecommunications, and at least telecommunications will be a key component in the future. Once Chinese infrastructure is laid and Chinese equipment is loaded on it, it is a matter of time that Chinese standards will be used. At the moment this is just a scenario depicted by myself, but it is not just a fictional one; it could be a feasible one in the not-too-distant future.

China’s case contrasts with Korea’s. The latter is also interested in making locally developed technology (e.g. WiBro) an international standard. It is expected, though, that without such rising as China achieves in global economy and thereby as soft power, Korea’s attempt will get only limited impacts. That’s one of the reasons why I believe China will rise in the regime of international ICT standardization as well.

* This part uses as a source of information “China’s 60th Anniversary: Celebrating Beijing’s Peaceful Rise”, Wang Di and Ron Matthews, 1 October 2009, RSIS Commentaries (S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies, Nanyang Technological University, www.rsis.edu.sg),

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Baisheng An says:

Think about Mormonism.
kennedysiu says:

Chinese industry not only sees developing countries as prime markets for Chinese products and standards but also as potential supporters of Chinese standards in international standards bodies, both official orgs and consortia. Nevertheless, this seems to me more like “hard” than “soft” power. China is using explicit material incentives to attract allies, not its reputation or admiration by others. This is about dollars and cents, not some Third World anti-Western alliance. Additionally, China lacks “soft power” in international standards bodies themselves. Chinese have not been very adept players in these organizations; they’ve had more success when hiring former employees of Western companies to represent them. If that’s soft power it is Western soft power, not Chinese. Over time, Chinese will become adept at the unwritten rules of international standards setting, gain more respect from other participants, and be more influential simply because of who they are. Only then can we say that they’ll be able to utilize their soft power.
Niklas Lindblom says:

Heejin, It is a very valuable point that discussion focus should be based on China’s rise as a soft power, since this is likely to have a greater impact on global development in the near future than their military power. The fact that China is using official aid money to build a ground for deployment of their “indigenous standards” is perhaps not brought up as often as it should. What this implies is that China is investing in infrastructure outside its own borders to facilitate the international uptake of Chinese developed ICT standards, and by doing so circumventing the first obstacle to reach international markets. However, the countries invested in are as you mention third world countries with a very long way to go before reaching their full potential within ICT. Will this have any slowing effects on the implementation of “indigenous standards”? Or maybe, because the Chinese are involved from the first stage in building ICT infrastructure they will have even greater influence on an international level?
Often reports are heard of domestic Chinese media control, showing that the government is using media as a channel for opinionating the public. If Chinese authorities are attempting to control the content of news reports etc within the country, I expect these reports from foreign independent media to be somewhat of a thorn in their eye. So what is to be expected from China’s attempts to gain greater influence over international media? If the purpose is in fact to broadcast glorifying news on China, isn’t there a risk that this will be counterproductive as conflicting reports from foreign media only would highlight the attempt of control?

China’s 60th Anniversary, its Rise in Soft Power and ICT Standardisation

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Heejin Lee

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