The rise of China really refers to the last 40 years of China's reform and opening-up.
China started that reform 40 years ago, in 1978.
China was pretty much in disarray, Chinese economy was very backwards,
and challenges came out of the disastrous Cultural Revolution.
In a short span of time, only, like, in 40 years,
China has risen to become the second largest economy in the world.
This is considered to be sort of miraculous.
And people in the world are kind of surprised by the speed
and the scale of China's economic success.
So, I think this is largely how we define the rise of China to be a major world power.
I think the Chinese exceptionalism is probably a concept
in comparison or as a result of
much discussion of American exceptionalism.
American exceptionalism has been defined and discussed, explored for almost, like, two centuries,
starting with the French historian Tocqueville and also the German sociologist Max Weber.
They tend to define the American exceptionalism as a
success story of modern capitalism in conjunction with the political system of democracy
and the Protestant ethics, the religious backdrop.
Which all those figures, the historians and sociologists and thinkers of the 18th, 19th and even 20th century
find very unique, exceptional in terms of the development of the U.S. modernity.
The Chinese exceptionalism is being discussed very recently.
As a matter of fact, not much has been said about the Chinese exceptionalism.
I would consider myself as one of the first ones
who uses the concept to define Chinese exceptionalism.
The differences between Chinese exceptionalism and the U.S. or American exceptionalism is, that
by large the Chinese exceptionalism has been pretty much a
exploration or exposition by Chinese nations, by Chinese themselves.
And the world has yet to define what exactly is Chinese exceptionalism.
And that there are a number of features we can talk about Chinese exceptionalism in comparison to American exceptionalism.
One thing is that both, Chinese and Americans consider themselves to be, in a way, destiny of the world civilization.
However, the Chinese would consider itself both, as the destiny and origin of the world civilization,
whereas the United States only considers itself to be somewhat a destiny but not origin.
The origin of the American cultures, American exceptionalism really comes from the Western civilizations.
Specifically from the Judeo-Christian and, of course, the Greek-Roman traditions.
The Chinese on the other hand, believe that the origin is uniquely Chinese,
and China somehow is predestined to play a critical role in the world in the future.
So, those are some of the defining features of Chinese exceptionalism and American exceptionalism.
And we are still in the preliminary stage to make a further inquiry into this fascinating issue.
We have conducted a number of public opinion surveys, the global public opinion research on China.
The existing public opinion research done by a number of U.S. survey organizations.
But since 2010, my colleagues and I in Shanghai Jiaotong University and the Duke University
started to collaborate on this project of global public opinion survey about China.
We started with the U.S., and we have done several rounds. We have done three
and this year we are going to start the fourth round
of the American public opinion, of the American attitudes towards the rise of China.
Likewise, we have done several rounds of public opinion surveys in Asia,
13 countries and regions in Asia,
and also 26 countries in Latin America, 36 countries in Africa.
We have not done really public opinion research in Europe.
But as far as the resorts of the these public opinion surveys are concerned,
usually people have a positive attitudes
towards the rise of China. In other words, people around the world
truly welcome a prosperous and peaceful rise of China
to contribute to the lasting peace and prosperity of the world.
That is a kind of general consensus.
However we see all the results from the different regions, different continents
that the public opinion towards China is mixed, especially concerning the Chinese direction.
And we talk about Chinese exceptionalism and people in our world are basically concerned about China's political orientation.
In other words, how China has become a sort of superpower in the world,
how China is going to shape the world order
according to its own political understanding of political system and social systems.
In this regard, China is really kind of exceptional, you know,
people do not really see whether China is going to move towards
a more open democratic society and become part of the world family members.
not simply the economic globalization
but also political and social globalization where you have
the ideas, some of the universal ideas of, you know,
democratic political system and free market economy
and a large middle class and diverse cultural atmosphere.
So, those are the features that people would like to see around the world.
China is moving towards the similar direction.
So far, they are concerned as a result of our public opinion research around the world,
people are basically concerned because they're not really sure whether China is moving towards that direction.
Yes. The soft power concept was produced by the American scholar Joseph Nye,
who was actually an assistant secretary of State Department under Bill Clinton's administration.
And then he served as dean of the Harvard Kennedy School of Government.
He came up with this concept, the soft power,
referring to the use of cultural power, you know,
like education, popular culture and all that sort of power of persuasion,
rather than the power of coercion .
In other words, the military and, you know, economic power in the international politics.
So, Joseph Nye was sort of pretty clear about the concept soft power,
referring to the international relations or country deals with each other,
these two sides, the soft power and hard power.
In China however, the Chinese President Hu Jintao took up this concept
and turned it into a big concept to promote China's soft power.
He called it Chinese cultural soft power in his party congress speech,
as a promotion of the Chinese image, Chinese impact around the world.
So, this is the sort of involvement from a strictly international relations concept
into a broader, a kind of all-around projects and strategy
to promote China's influence around the world.
So this is basically an outline of the soft power.
And China has, the Chinese government really has
put a lot, has really invested a great deal in promoting China's soft power.
A good example will be the Confucius Institute.
And also, China invested a lot of money in media, the traditional media, television,
the radio, broadcasting as well as the internet media.
China started a lot of exchange, a lot more exchanges,
educational exchange, cultural exchange, and many other exchanges
to  present a more humane, a better image of China
and China becoming part of the world community.
And more recently the Chinese government starts to
advocate a vision for the humanities, towards building a commonwealth of humanity
as its goal, as its main objectives for its soft power campaign.
Some of the American critics consider this is a sort of charming, of charm offensive of China to promote soft power.
And again, you know, like in the public opinion research,
people around the world start to feel worried about even the Chinese soft power campaign.
Like Joseph Nye for example, starts to think about,
starts to talk about China's sharp power rather than soft power,
meaning that the power that this culture influences the campaigns to promote Chinese cultures and all the images
are pushed and promoted largely by the Chinese government.
Whereas in Joseph Nye's opinion those should largely come from the civil society, from the private enterprises, from the individual citizens.
Whereas in the Chinese case it's essentially a government campaign, it's a government project.
Whether or not this somehow reflects the
will of the Chinese people and the will of the people around the world,
it becomes sort of problematic.
So this is basically, roughly a kind of, I would say, you know, to summarize the soft power campaign in China,
I mean, this is really related to Chinese exceptionalism.
How exceptional is Chinese, the so-called Chinese characteristics?
And how can China be really part of the whole international community, the whole world community,
to adopt and to be integrated into part of the,
or what we call the universal values, how China would accept the universal values.
And this will be a key task for China, a major objective in times ahead.
