China’s soft power, according to Brand Finance’s Global Soft Power Index 2026, places it second only to the US, which China Daily loftily argued “is less about who tries to project strength, and more about who inspires confidence.”
That confidence is measured, the paper says in “how ordinary people around the world interpret credibility, stability and usefulness in a fractured global environment”, which means China’s development story.
So solar panels, electric buses and climate targets are lined up to show progress. It means that a country that builds clean energy at scale must also be acting responsibly on the global stage.
But with China, that is clearly not the case: ask the Philippines which has been facing Chinese intimidation and bullying in the South China Sea for quite some years. Ask Tibetans whose human rights have been trampled upon, their children forced into government schools that deny them their culture and the degradation of their environment.
Shaoyu Yuan, who researches on soft power from his perch in New York University, was quoted in the South China Morning Post as saying that many people are “experiencing China online” in terms of entertainment, food and lifestyle routines.
This maybe so especially in the US where “In a period of fatigue and polarisation in the US, people gravitate towards low-stakes lifestyle content as a safe language for expressing what they want emotionally: comfort, order, practicality, self-care,” Yuan said.
Chenchen Zhang, associate professor of international history at Durham University, believes the trend is little to do with the Chinese state. It is about “ethnic and cultural Chineseness which is not owned by the PRC.”
But she added the caveat that perceptions about China were changing in a positive way and such sentiments have nothing to do with ideology. It’s about “small habits that make a culture feel normal and relatable.”
Pang Zhongying, professor of international relations at Sichuan University says that exposure to Chinese soft power should be balanced with an understanding of its geopolitics, so that people don’t carry reflexively negative attitudes about China when they move into positions of influence.
