have been reading up on the notion of ‘soft power‘ recently. apparently it was Lǎozǐ who came up with the concept initially in Dàodéjīng 道德經 in 7c BC, then adopted by Joseph Nye and Steven Lukes in a modern sense.
china’s been pushing this soft power thing hard, setting up Confucius Institutes all around the world (it was only recently that i knew such a thing existed). just how effective they are is not yet known.
having spent way too much money at Ikea yesterday, it occured to me that the furniture giant is totally exercising ’soft power’ for sweden – selling swedish design, meatballs, groceries and books. i had never eaten at Ikea before so i gave it a taste; it was surreal.
i even got some ’swedish salmon roe’ in a tube:
then i went home and read about the ‘sybiosis of sweden and ikea‘.
this sort of thing is probably what china is aiming for; but what can it market to create such attraction towards all things chinese? at the moment it seems like they are selling ‘confucianism’, not without some paradox: