which appeal to developing countries and on the counterpart, more popular theories are “China threat theory” and “China collapse theory”, especially highlighted by G.W. Bush in his first term of presidency, when the U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice threat China as a rival. These realities cause attention from Chinese authorities that “Chinese model of development” may cause uneasiness worldwide and presumably the foremost reason for China to improve its reputation and national image in the international scene. Looking through the China’s diplomacy and foreign policy in the past three decades could also get some hints on the shift from hard power to soft power: “ good neighbor diplomacy” ( 1980s and early 1990s), “great power diplomacy”(late 1990s), “energy diplomacy”, “soft power diplomacy”, “public diplomacy”(2000s) as well as “peaceful rise” and “peaceful development” not only these national strategies, but also by advertising Chinese values and publicizing its culture, some other efforts as steps to attract international students and promote the study of Chinese language. Nowadays , even it could be easily to find some evidence that supports the improvement of applying soft power and spreading China’s national image and even we could find the encouraging change from Professor Joseph Nye of Harvard University, who is first raise up the term of “soft power”, whose attitude from previously downplaying the strengthening of China’s soft power as being a development for the future in his book in Soft Power(2004) to now arguing that China’s soft power is rapidly growing in Asia in his article published in the Wall Street Journal (Asia) on December 29, 2005. But the mainstream assessment of the state of China’s soft power by Chinese analysts is that soft power is still a weak link in China’s pursuit for a stronger comprehensive national power because the Chinese discourse on soft power has mainly focused on its sources and potential utility in Chinese foreign strategy. Accordingly, the research poses the question: How does China build its national image by using and enhancing the soft power in its peaceful strategy?
In September 2011 another White Paper called “China’s Peaceful Development” issued by the State Council Information Office, in which it explains the “peaceful development” more academically, scientifically and theoretically. In this paper, it summarized the “path to peaceful development” as follows: “From the broader perspective on the world history, the path to peaceful development is: develop China itself through safeguarding world peace and development and in turn to safeguard world peace and development though its own development; when stressed on China’s own strength, reform and innovation to achieve development and at the same time China has to adhere to the opening policy and draw on the strengths of other countries; China has to adapt to the development trend of economic globalization and to seek mutual benefit and common development with other countries; with the support and help from the international community efforts, China would like to promote an enduring peace, common prosperity and harmonious world. The most distinctive feature is “five developments”: scientific development, self-development, open development, peaceful development and cooperative development.” The general aim and the foreign policy based on peaceful development are explored clearly as well in this White Paper 2011. In a nutshell, it summarized those “five points” introduced in 2005. 3.3.3 The difference between development and rise Even though there are still many articles, papers, journals using both terms, especially in academic circles, there is actually only “peaceful development theory” used officially now since April 2004. President Hu and Prime Minister Wen have replaced the use the term of “rise” with “development”, which means the top leader made a decision to use peaceful rise in research and academic circles, but no longer to use in the leadership speeches of government and Party documents. Despite of changing the terminology there is little difference in the content of the peaceful rise theory and peaceful development theory in Chinese discourse besides includes a new concept of “harmonious world”. In Lin Jianfei’s paper, “……(Besides), there is no essential difference between the words, both are just two ways of expressing the same process.” But the terminology of “rise”, in western discourse, implicates like a challenge and it will post a threat to the pre-existing situation and the balance of the power. Also a Chinese scholar explains that rise
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