The United States and China increasingly compete with each other around the world — both in terms of hard power and soft power. In the last two decades, China has shown increasing interest in promoting its soft power — perhaps most notably through its Belt and Road Initiative. In addition to that enormous project, China also pursues less well-known ways to promote its image, narrative, and relationships through culture, business, technology, media, and more. We asked five experts to provide their insights on important forms of Chinese soft power — and how it is or is not having an effect.Read more below.Owen J. Daniels Associate Director of Analysis, Center for Security and Emerging Technology at Georgetown University Non-Resident Senior Fellow, The Atlantic CouncilChina’s overlooked soft power strategy in AI has manifested in releasing powerful open models, like DeepSeek’s R1 and Moonshot AI’s Kimi K2. Broadly speaking, open models are highly customizable because users can freely access and manipulate their weights for different purposes, compared to proprietary closed models like OpenAI’s ChatGPT. R1 and Kimi K2 can compete with the best U.S. models, meaning Chinese companies are offering powerful AI performance with fewer barriers to adoption. At the same time, the government has championed the Global South in international AI governance efforts. China appears intent on embedding its technology in the developing world’s AI stacks, where polling suggests optimism about AI’s transformational potential is higher compared to the developed world. Both of the recently released U.S. and Chinese AI plans advocate for open models, but China arguably has a head start — even as OpenAI released its own open model last week. This competition for open AI influence is an area to watch.Maria Repnikova Director of the Center for Global Information Studies and Assistant Professor in Global Communication at Georgia State UniversityDiscussions of China’s soft power often focus on its media diplomacy and the Belt
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The United States and China increasingly compete with each other around the world — both in terms of hard power and soft power. In the last two decades, China has shown increasing interest in promoting its soft power — perhaps most notably through its Belt and Road Initiative. In addition to that enormous project, China also pursues less well-known ways to promote its image, narrative, and relationships through culture, business, technology, media, and more. We asked five experts to provide their insights on important forms of Chinese soft power — and how it is or is not having an effect.Read
