In the past 30 years, China has created an economic machine that has lifted more people out of poverty in a short space of time than any nation in history. It has built world-class factories, vast modern cities and a continental highway system. Now it wants to build something less tangible: soft power.
The sixth plenary session of the 17th Central Committee of the Communist party last month took many by surprise by focusing on cultural issues. The official communiqué called for building a “socialist core value system”. The China Daily suggested that the nation’s cultural industry was lacking since it produced only $174bn of cultural “value added”. It went on to highlight the urgent need for China to promote “its cultural sector to boost its soft power”.
