Media, Culture and Social Change in Asia Series, no. 53. Abingdon, Oxon; New York, NY: Routledge, 2018. xviii, 266 pp. (Tables, B&W photos, illustrations.) US$170.00, cloth. ISBN 978-1-138-66989-5.
The progenitor of the soft power concept, Joseph Nye famously pronounced China to have a soft power deficit in a January 17, 2012 New York Times article titled, “Why China is Weak on Soft Power.” The most important contribution of Voci and Hui’s anthology, Screening China’s Soft Power, is to challenge this oft-repeated and widely accepted wisdom. Significantly, they and the essays collected in their volume do so not by demonstrating the efficacy of the Chinese state’s efforts but by calling for a rethinking of what we understand by soft power itself. This important intervention makes the work relevant for readers beyond those interested in China alone. In their introduction chapter, Voci and Hui point out that the discourse around soft power has collapsed the interests of a people or culture with those of the state. Furthermore, to meet demands for sound bites, the complexity of likeability has been simplified to polls that measure approval ratings. Freeing soft power from such an approach makes it possible to see that a culture may develop strong soft power without the state benefitting, that some cultural aspects might win favour and others not, and so on.
The essays in Screening Soft Power are organized into three sections. The first probes the failures of Chinese soft power, but it goes well beyond approval ratings. In “Projecting influence: film and the limits of Beijing’s soft power,” Paul Clark traces the fortunes of People’s Republic films at international festivals, demonstrating that winning awards may be good for cultural soft power, but that the most well-received films are rarely those espoused by the state. In “Soft power in the living room: a survey of television drama on CCTV [China Central Television]’s foreign-language channels,” Dani Madrid-Morales demonstrates a similar pattern at work in television. Instead of showcasing the most popular programming from China for foreign audiences, the government selects the materials it believes foreign audiences ought to like—with predictably limited success. In the third chapter, Victor Fan examines the Chinese blockbuster’s failure to win wide international audiences, using as a primary example megastar Zhao Wei (a.k.a. Vicky Zhao)’s 2013 directorial debut, Zhi women zhong jiang shiqu de qingchun (So Young). This is a nostalgia film about a group of middle-aged women who look back on their college days and their youth, and somehow manage to erase all memories of 1989. In so doing, the film trades on the idea of humanism while at the same time closing down the possibility of any cultural exchange about what humanism might be, instead shutting China off as a zone of exception and foreclosing on the possibility of wider soft power appeal.
The pattern of clumsy state interference limiting potential cultural appeal continues in Vanessa Frangville’s “Going to Hollywood with non-Han films: A potential soft power synergy?” She examines the state-sponsored Chinese Non-Han Film Project (Zhongguo shaoshuminzu dianying gongcheng) that picks up on the nomination of ethnic minority films for the Best Foreign-Language Film Oscar, but, she suggests, is lapsing rapidly into “typical propaganda cinema, albeit with a new aesthetics” (85). In the final chapter in the section, Viola Sarnelli looks at the soft power efforts of CCTV’s English-language program, UpClose, to showcase interviews with foreigners who have settled and succeeded in China. However, she suggests that the elitism of these portraits may limit their appeal.
It is in the second section that the essays collected in Screening China’s Soft Power begin to diverge most evidently from the classic focus of the soft power discourse on the state. Luke Robinson’s “Non-state agents, quotidian soft power, and the work of the overseas film festival: case studies from London” emphasizes how “sole traders” can participate in the practice of soft power through, for example, setting up Chinese film festivals. Furthermore, these festivals may develop Chinese cultural appeal in ways that sometimes chime with those of the state, but sometimes are more aligned with the interests and/or ideas of the individuals involved. Examining the diversification of Chinese film offerings in New Zealand, editor Luo Hui’s own chapter shows a similarly complex array of actors and investments in the exercise of soft power. The final essay in this section, by Keith Wagner, looks at the aspirations of CCTV’s African power base in Kenya and the suspicion it has generated, but also the possibility of new televisual hybrids that it has opened up.
If the second section of the book emphasized local distinction, the final section pushes on with the idea of a plurality of Chinese soft powers and soft power actors. Editor Paola Voci’s chapter on digital cultures emphasizes not only the efforts of the Chinese state to harness this burgeoning realm, but also the almost inevitable proliferation of humorous, light materials that exceed the state at the same time as they enhance Chinese soft power. Sun Wanning’s chapter on the reality television program If You Are the One demonstrates that those Chinese television products that are winning international audiences are the ones that the state is not promoting, and Elena Pollacchi’s examination of recent Chinese film festival successes makes a similar point: even if not opposed to the state, their credibility is linked to the ability to retain autonomy. In the final core chapter, Gina Marchetti affirms this insight with a close analysis of Xu Anhua (Ann Hui)’s work.
Rounded out with an afterword by Yingjin Zhang, full glossaries of Chinese characters for each chapter, as well as bibliographies and filmographies, this is a well-produced anthology that not only enables our deeper understanding of Chinese soft power but also asks us to rethink soft power itself. It deserves to be widely read and will make an excellent core text for classroom use.
Chris Berry
King’s College, London, United Kingdom