Soft power

Even though Taiwan is self-ruled, the Chinese Communist Party has attempted to exploit these shared religious roots in an effort to impose its own rule over Taiwan.

It's a form of exerting soft power.

Wen Xianghan, an expert in Taiwanese religion, says, In other words, the Chinese government is leveraging Matsu's revered status in Taiwan to sway political opinion in favor of China.

We especially saw this in how the Chinese Communist Party sponsored more Matsu exchanges between Taiwan and China in late 2023, leading up to the January 2024 presidential elections.

Okay.

In your answer, you talked about soft power and I sort of made a note of that.

And I wonder where we are today and what's happening with the administration in the US and what's happening, as you say, with the divisiveness within different countries from Germany to the UK in terms of the polarity in politics would you say soft power has taken a back seat it's not as valued even though it should be at this stage the most one of the most valuable powers one should have in place but somehow you think it's taken a back seat

No, I think it's a little bit like globalisation.

We have an expression that was everything and which is accordingly interpreted in many different ways.

And if we look at soft power, if I look, I mean, when a professor and I define the expression, And it was to be defined in a benevolent way.

I mean, earth power, for example, in terms of cultural interaction, it was something which was enriching.

Today, soft power is used very often.

And that story, written by a woman, turned the bundan on its head.

So why should we read the works of Japanese women writers? And why should we read the challenging work of Japanese women writers breaking down gender norms in the 1960s? I love to fall back on a quote by translator Allison Markin-Powell, a member of the translator collective Strong Women, Soft Power, that helped contribute to the boom in translated Japanese fiction by women.

Lucy North, who translated the short stories of Taiko Kono, as well as Sayaka Murata's translator, Jenny Tapley Takamori, are the other two members of the collective.

According to Markin Powell, by reading women in translation, by buying or borrowing books, but also by talking about them in any medium, readers demonstrate that there is a demand for the subjects women choose to write about and the perspective they offer, that it makes a difference who tells the story and why they tell it.

What can they actually do?

I mean, they're saying that we've got loads, we Democratic lawmakers have loads of soft power that we can use to, uh, mobilize the public, to serve as the connective tissue between prominent election litigators, pro-democracy groups, resources that these local election administrators can take advantage of when they want to understand the law and what's within their rights.

And, you know, they wanna be that link.

Um, I, I spoke to former Attorney General Eric Holder about this, who's been advising the task force.

In the 11th century, they erupted, they conquered the Shang, they established their dominance over the entire northern part of what is today China, most of the Yellow River Basin.

Then, gradually, they started losing their real military power, but they maintained their rule still big before the springs and autumns for three centuries because they had what Joseph Nye, the late United States political scientist, termed very nicely the soft power.

You know, Nye spoke about soft power, which comprises institutional, ideological, and cultural power, and the Zhou were ideological.

They claimed that they have the mandate of heaven, the kings of Zhou bore the honorific title sons of heaven, and nobody dared to proclaim himself son of heaven, not a single political leader.

neither in the springs and autumns nor even in the warring states dared to say, I am the son of heaven.

Iran and Oman might have done a deal.

Does anyone still care what the United States wants? Is a geostrategic crisis potentially a soft power opportunity? And exciting news for anyone who thought US elections needed more balloons.

I'm Andrew Mueller.

The Monocle Daily starts now.

Well, we look forward to hearing about that upon your return.

Mm-hmm.

Um, Nega, hopefully later in the show, we are actually talking about travel, uh, and other sort of soft power opportunities inspired by either crises or cultural happenstances or a combination of the two, and you are actually planning to sort of do that, at which point you're going to have to out yourself as such a tragic fan of The White Lotus that you're actually going to see where it was filmed.

Indeed, indeed.

It's partly biological, partly socialized, that doesn't really matter.

But no one really talks about how does that give them an advantage in these spaces? Like, how does that allow, give them power? The power of, like, soft power, for example, the power of persuasion and influence.

Uh, I haven't got the numbers exactly, but I know everyone talks about power dynamics in terms of hard power, presidents, congressmen, politicians, CEOs, all men having hard power.

But if you actually look at the normal day-to-day decisions men and women have, especially in relationships, like what, watching for TV, what we're watching on TV, what we're eating for dinner, when are we going on holiday, those are decisions made by women.

And there's something like about, of about 15 biggest questions in a normal person's life, about 13 of them are made by women, the female partner, and they do have more soft power.

Um, but no one ever seems to want to talk about that.

Uh, and why not? It's, it's a show of women's superiority over men in their own domain.

martinis and for getting laid? Or do you want to be part of the Soviet collective and you're dying for Stalin? Now, it's a false dialectic, but there's tons of academic literature on Bond as a Cold War image and symbol and a form of propaganda.

This is called soft power.

when you utilize culture for culture war on behalf of any government or nation state.

So this occurs mainly in the West, but other countries do it as well where they've had forms of soft power.

So Hollywood is a form of soft power.

Hollywood is a form of conditioning.

Everybody's heard of product placement.

This is something I was studying in grad school.