by Xinhua writer Liu Si
BEIJING, Feb. 13 (Xinhua) -- Recently, a term "sharp power" has become "popular" following a U.S. think tank report and a cover story of the British magazine Economist in December 2017, both of which raised so-called "concerns" over the growing influence of Russia and China.
In January, Joseph Nye, the father of "soft power" from Harvard University, published two articles respectively on U.S. magazine Foreign Affairs and international media organization Project Syndicate, attributing "soft power" to the West and labeling China and Russia with "sharp power".
Nye defined "soft power" as the ability to affect others by attraction and persuasion, but linked "sharp power" to information of warfare, particularly waged by China and Russia.
However, if one looks into the term "sharp power" and learns its ins and outs, one may find that the term is no more than a language trap, coined and manipulated by some Western countries with "zero-sum" mentality and cultural hegemony.
In fact, the "China threat" hypothesis is nothing new. It started in the 1990s and varied in different forms from time to time, but was doomed to fade in the end. What history teaches us is that a peaceful China can only withstand the test of time.
As the term "sharp power" is meant to preach a new round of "China threat", Michael Szonyi, professor of Chinese history and director of the Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies at Harvard University, told Xinhua that "one of the reasons that the term doesn't really work is that it suggests that the 'sharp power' is centralized".
In his two new books about China, Szonyi, together with the world's other leading China experts, examined China's growth and how the world should look at diverse cultures and societies. That was also reflected in his view on the term "sharp power".
He said that there were elements in China that the West doesn't like, adding "we need to draw attention to those but we need to be clear that's not China".
"We have to become customized towards a more active China," Robert Ross, professor of political science at Boston College and executive committee of Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies at Harvard University, told Xinhua.
Wang Dong, deputy executive director of the Institute for China-U.S. People-to-People Exchange, told Xinhua that there were a lot of phrases that just come and go every year. But he cautioned about the misunderstanding and mis-perception behind these terms, warning "that sort of mutual reciprocal misunderstanding or mis-perception might probably increase mutual distrust or lead to a deepening security dilemma".
Wang called on scholars to work very hard to strengthen communications and exchanges and try to better understand each other's real intentions rather than demonize each other.
"Of course it's not an easy task but we have to work hard on that," said Wang.
