Another US Deficit - China and America - Public Diplomacy in the Age of the Internet

Critical Review of a Government Report


On the 15th of February 2011 the Senate Foreign Relations Committee released a report, commissioned by Senator Richard Lugar, which presents the disparities between China’s and America’s public diplomacy (PD), and calls the US government to reinvigorate US PD, particularly bestowing the Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG) a prominent role within it. In fact the report stresses that the rise of China on the international stage poses new questions for the US economic and military security, therefore the US has to address the issue as soon as possible to avoid predicaments.

The report offers an insight into China’s PD, which relies mainly on its ancient culture, on language teaching institutions, the Confucius Institutes and Classrooms, and its increasing role in the UN peacekeeping operations, where China does not sent combat but engineers. This is all part of the public diplomacy campaign that China inaugurated in 2005 called “Peaceful Rise of China”. However the report stresses that the success of this campaign, which has also been supported by the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games and the 2010 Shanghai Expo, plays down the possible negative effects of China’s rise. In fact China has a number of liabilities, from poverty to environmental degradation, from corruption to poor working conditions and from abuse of human rights and harassment of journalists to territorial issues and its support for suspicious regimes. The Foreign Relations Committee is also particularly concerned over the fact that while China enhances its PD, it also restricts the American voice to reach Chinese people, limiting American platforms for PD in its territory both physically - resisting further opening of US public diplomacy facilities - and virtually - censoring the internet. China is alleged to take advantage of America’s openness while skewing America’s efforts to reach the Chinese public.
In order to tackle this predicament the US relies on a limited number of US citizens working in China and on still limited, but increasing, student exchanges. However the report stresses the necessity for the US government to supports the Internet Censorship Circumvention Technology (ICCT), and this task must be enforced by the BBG rather than the State department because the former is immune to political pressures and already uses on a daily basis ICCT

The report offers a valuable asset to assess the recent developments of China’s PD, it identifies the major problem confronting US PD, the censorship of the internet, and therefore proposes a possibly successful strategy to tackle the issue without further deteriorating China-US relations.
However it is clearly politically motivated insofar as China is portrayed as a potential enemy which the US has to get ready to fight against. Of particular concern is the association of China to the Soviet Union, and the fact that the report envisions a US-China confrontation not only in the economic sphere, but possibly also in the military field.
Moreover the focus on internet restriction in China and the concern it rises for the US suggests that the latter is still clearly interested in sending its message out there rather than engage with the people. In fact despite the fact that China’s restriction of internet freedom is deemed to be worrying in many respect, the US should focus mainly on long-term engagement with the Chinese people, especially through cultural exchanges. As the report notes, the US has already an embryonic settlement in China constituted by the US Peace Corps Program, and President Obama has expressed the will to increase the number of Americans studying in China, therefore the US PD should concentrate on this aspect which can offset internet restriction. Relying on American people in China the US puts down allegations of propaganda that often sprang from governmental communication in foreign countries, does not risk to upset the Chinese government, and enhances the possibility to build long-term relations between the two countries.

Sources:

Armstrong M., 2011, “Another US Deficit - China and America - Public Diplomacy in the Age of the Internet” at http://mountainrunner.us/2011/02/Lugar_US_Deficit_China_America_Public_Diplomacy.html.


Lugar R., 2011, “Another Us Deficit - China and America - Public Diplomacy in the Age of the Internet”, at http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1574605/Blog/Reports/2011-2%20Another%20US%20Deficit%20-%20Public%20Diplomacy%20in%20the%20Age%20of%20the%20Internet%20%28SFRC%20report%29.pdf