Spotlight: "Sharp power" or Western invisible power - Xinhua

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.

American media critic and sociologist Herbert Schiller, who was widely known for the term "cultural imperialism", examined in several of his writings the role of media-cultural power in American global domination.

Schiller also argued that American media was controlled by a few corporations that "create, process, refine and preside over the circulation of images and information which determines our beliefs, attitudes and ultimately our behavior".

Except for "sharp power", there are several other terms ended with "power" invented by American scholars, including "smart power" (a combination of hard power and soft power) both by Nye and executive director of PEN American Cente Suzanne Nossel in the early 21st century, as well as "discriminate power" in 2013 by Michael Mazarr from the U.S. National War College.

No matter how many terms are created, they are used to promote Americanized democracy and safeguarding its global interest.

The invention of the term "sharp power" should remind us another academic phrase -- "Thucydides' trap" -- popularized by Graham Allison at the Harvard Kennedy School and often used regarding China-U.S. relations to explain the likelihood of conflict between a rising power and a dominant one.

Amitav Acharya, a notable Indian-born Canadian scholar on international relations, told Xinhua that Thucydides' trap "can become a self-fulfilling prophecy", adding that "it's dangerous because you start thinking that somehow this part of the concept has some analytical value."

Chen Fengying, a research fellow at the China Institutes of Contemporary International Relations, told Xinhua that attracted by the growth of emerging economies including China, more and more countries have begun to look eastward.

"In fear of losing their dominant place in the world, some of the Western countries find it difficult to adapt themselves to changes of the world order," Chen said.

Consequently, showing great concerns and anxiety over China's rapid growth in recent years, some Western countries once and again labeled China with terms like "China threat", "China Collapse", and at this time "sharp power", but ignoring China's normal foreign relations, economic, people-to-people activities and others.

In this regard, Qian Chengdan, a notable professor of history at Peking University, once wrote in an article that after the end of World War II, the United States had considered the former Soviet Union, Japan, and the European Union (EU) as adversaries or potential competitors.
"Now it's China's turn," added Qian.