(21/60) Eight Ways China is Shaping the World this month using Soft Power (Sep ‘22)
Every month until Dec 2025, we highlight 8 Chinese soft power actions of the past month, in order to: i) Capture the acceleration towards a more multi-polar world. ii) Strengthen East-West and South-South understanding. iii) Show the importance of soft power to China’s overseas growth.
This is based on tertiary sources and in-country local accounts.
Previous 20 reports (of 60 until Dec 2025): https://china2025.medium.com/
Sept 2022
{By request, in this report we are elaborating on the previous month’s BRICS section. Makes sense. Why? Because The BRICS may be the anchor of a new multi-polar world (with soft power being a key brick in the BRICS expansion).
1) BRICS (1of3): The Big Idea: Soft Power’s Sub-Regional Impact is vital to the BRICS multipolar agenda. The BRICS, as most of you know, are a group of 5 Emerging Economies which were once coined the “BRICS” (by Goldman and Sachs) based on their first letters of their country names. These represented the rise of Emerging Economies across the world: India in South Asia, China in East Asia, Russia in Northern Eurasia, Brazil in South America and South Africa for Africa. Admittedly, none of these countries — including China — are Soft Power Global powerhouses when compared to the UK, US, France, Canada, or even Japan South Korea. However, all are REGIONAL Soft Power forces in their respective sub regions.
India has impressive soft power in all of its neighbours (yes, including Pakistan), and Russia has profound legacy and contemporary soft power east of the Carpathian Mountains across Central Asia, parts of the Caucuses, Turkey, and in Mongolia, and also within some Afghan and Indian academic circles and streets. China has immediate soft power presence in some of its neighbouring countries (Eastern Russia, Cambodia, Singapore, Northern Myanmar, etc). Brazil is a stalwart in its region and well beyond with its culture, biodiversity, and musical legacy. Mexico has very strong soft power across Central America, parts of the US and the Caribbean in terms of media, food, and educational institutions.
Now let’s turn to the inevitable expansion of the BRICS where internal communiques this month suggest there could be five new members as early as 2023: Iran, Saudi Arabia, Argentina, Egypt, Mexico. Walk through them through with a soft power lens: Egypt is a leader in its region — especially in terms of entertainment, investment, history, and its Al-Masari accent. Saudi Arabia has economic and religious soft power across the Middle East, Argentina (secondary to Spain) is a soft power beacon in South America and together with Brazil are South America’s top global tourism Ambassadors. Iran has large swaths across Iraq, Afghanistan, the Caucuses, and also into India and even to parts of the US. Turkey has relentless soft power across Turkic speaking world and N-E Africa, and also and Central Asia.
2) BRICS (2of3): The INKBLOT: When the sub-regions connect. It appears, in surprising clarity that all BRICS members are already soft power forces in their subregions. While each country has its own gravitational pull of its neighbours, the collective orbit is the captivating thought here. When we take an inkblot approach (ie: when you press a marker on a page and the ink spreads), the respective sub-regions can merge to one another. Within each pull, they may be pulled together. Soft power is a precursor to other forms of engagement and influence, and each of these have that first point of entry. If they find common soft power objectives, at the nexus of their imminent overlapping
There are several layers to this idea, which can be summarized as such: Soft power is a gateway to softer diplomacy and its invites dialogue. It is a convener of sorts. These 5 + 5 countries are all soft power sub-regional powers when one looks at the world as individual regions or subregions (for this is how most countries look at themselves). These countries merit attention, and if they can find some areas of alignment (ie: economic integration, trade, military cooperation, cultural and academic exchanges, currency swaps), their collective impact is far than a sum of their parts.
3) BRICS (3of3): The BRICS as an Anchor to non-Western Multilateral Bodies. The BRICS is becoming an anchor to other regional blocks, in a form of BRICS+. Its momentum is also providing results. The BRICS now has working groups, sub-committees, and rolling interdisciplinary forums which meet between the annual meetings; with some bilateral meetings being reframed under the BRICS. It has become the leading forum which sits outside of the “Blue Bloc” political-economic-coalition of the past 3 generations, comprising today of 4 geographies: i) 5 Anglo-Saxon Nations, ii) The EU, iii) Japan & Korea, iv) Former Western USSR. Closely with the BRICS+, the SCO (Shanghai Cooperation Organization), is growing with Iran and Argentina, and with most observers and special guests as we saw in Samarkand this month. They both offer a form of nexus with the Russia-led Eastern Economic Union, and Russia’s Eastern Economic Forum. At multilateral bodies, de-dollarization is an increasing focus, confirmed this month by Russia’s VTB Bank Chief who stated they were building a collective basket currency to counter the US dollar. The decline of the USD’ usage and the rise of the yuan, dirhams, and rubles attest to this.
The BRICS are a brain trust of sorts to the SCO and other regional forums. These include MERCOSUR in South America via Brazil, SAARC for South Asia via India, and Southern Africa’s SACU with South Africa. Tall roads lead back to the BRICS. Until recently, the G20 was evolving into the leading “alternative forum” to Western led forums. Now however it seems the BRICS is the primary convener and conduit with each country playing its role as a central spoke back to their respective regions.
4) Chinese Aid becoming more visible — and effective. In several humanitarian crisis, China is beginning to make more and more of an impact. China has been a quiet contributor to humanitarian efforts mostly through grants and contributions to UN Agencies (ie: 470m USD in 2021). It has been increasingly involved in international development projects especially over past 3–4 years, yet now China (through CIDCA/”China Aid”) has begun to raise their actions and visibility with humanitarian efforts as well. It is tempting to compare Chinese efforts to other governments on a nominal level, though what is most important is the volume and speed China has contributed year on year. They’re the new player on the scene, much like Gulf countries were a decade ago, yet what differentiates them is that they have begun to implement activities themselves through their own NGOs. The only real comparison to China’s increasing presence as an operator as well as a donor, could be Turkey’s TICA. China — albeit not in scale yet — is the world’s most important new Aid Contributor and vital to watch. In a survey done earlier this year, we spoke with 8 of UN Office’s for Coordination for Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) across the world’s crises, and none were engaging with Chinese Aid, though a few expressed an interest to do so. The reasons: i) They never reached out to the Embassy and were stuck in their traditional donor contact cycles, ii) they didn’t understand how the Chinese Aid machine operated, iii) they didn’t have the linguistic capacity (despite Chinese being an official UN language); iv) they simply didn’t know the scale of China’s impact.
We see China engaging in more and more mostly natural disasters, and the horrendous Pakistan Floods of the past month are yet another example. These floods were called the worst that the UN’s Secretary General has ever seen, and covered a third of Pakistan. This was a catastrophic and heavily under-reported humanitarian crisis — and one which the Chinese responded to as a result of their long standing relationship with Pakistan.
5) China’s top EV car producers’ European strategy: We continue to watch China’s Electric Vehicle (EV) leader BYD grow around the world (and in Europe we have seen it primarily in busses). BYD just passed Volkswagen to be 3rd most valuable car company (Tesla, Toyota). This month, it is clear they have their sights on Europe as they have set their pricing which is a critical step for market entry. New prices have been set and BYD will enter 7 markets: 3 Scandinavia, BeneLux, and Germany (and may expand to the UK and France). They launched three vehicles and two will go for about 80,000 USD and one at half that. It also sends the second largest amount of batteries after CATL. It already exports cars to more than 70 countries and is a world leader in electric busses.
Already on many of the streets of European capitals, we see Chinese electric cars, which subtly (yet profoundly) drives Chinese Soft Power. Even in Denmark there are several Chinese car show rooms including Xpeng which opened a car show room this month directly across from Denmark’s Central station and most visited Tourist attraction: Tivoli Gardens (the 3rd oldest amusement park in the world). The usual companies are Polestar (which Swedes mistakenly claim as their own), Xpeng, and increasingly Nio. We also see BYD and Yutong electric busses with their charging stations in every seat for the next generation and their gadgets. While BYD has shared its pricing, the more exciting and innovative development will come from Nio who are poised to announce their Chinese and Norwegian model (of having Nio House showrooms) to the rest of Europe next month (will cover this in October report as they’re more akin to coffee bar fireplace apres ski lounges can set trends).
6) Chinese Trains continue to increase into Europe. This month the 10,000th freight train of the year to Europe arrived in Hamburg from Xian, China. It surpassed the 2021 benchmark by 10 days, despite supply chain bottlenecks and a drop in global demand. A decade ago, these were almost no trains to Europe in what is a remarkable new logistical phenomena. Indeed, these journeys are subsidized and there are discussions of how and if these subsidies will be scaled down, but the lessons have been learned: there is great value in land freight compared to air and sea. A key metric in the relationship between the EU and China is in trade, and transparent measurement of this is via rail. This story has been written by China and Europe has been on board with Germany and particularly Hungary being the main destinations and conduits. Russia as well as these trains mostly traverse Russia and are not susceptible to Russian sanctions. Why? Europe has quietly determined that overlooking Russian transit is the greater; much to China’s soft power gain while trade keeps trust alive.
7) GM Joint Venture in China. Yes, another car story, but this one is happening in China and is telling for China’s Soft Power to corral an American giant. Together, GM and SAIC have created the Cabrio, a convertible two seater, electric vehicle. With press stressing how some companies have been leaving China, and indeed this is true in the short term, the stories of companies remaining steadfast and cooperating with Chinese companies, do not get represented enough. An American thoroughbred and iconic company, General Motors, has shaken a falsely represented trend, and has doubled down on its Chinese efforts and in its cooperation with China, adapting to the Chinese market and learning.
8) Beijing SME Stock Exchange: As shared in previous reports, China has developed its own stock exchange for small businesses. This is an important development for investors to be able to support small businesses, but also, in the form of thought leadership in actively promoting smaller companies. Beijing calls these their Little Giants. The progress on this stock exchange this month has been in the establishment of a bourse of the 50 companies, similar to the Dow Jones 30, which will be a representation benchmark of how the stock exchange should be doing any given day. China keeps learning from other examples, yet with its own touches for the world to observe and replicate. This is specifically occurring in developing countries where SMEs drive economies, and where China merits alternative aspiration.
