By Taylor Dinerman
Tuesday, December 31, 2019
On the night of October 2, 2019, Comedy Central broadcast
the South Park episode “Band in
China,” a devastating satire of the way Beijing has used access to the Chinese
market to shape how the U.S. entertainment industry operates. The plot involves
one of the main characters’ going to China to try and sell marijuana, getting
arrested, and being rescued by Mickey Mouse and the Disney corporation, whose
subservience to China is emphasized. Disney agrees to kill Winnie the Pooh,
supposedly for resembling the Chinese leader, in exchange for opening up the
Chinese pot market. Meanwhile, back in the U.S., some of the other main
characters are trying to make a movie while being supervised and censored by
the Chinese military.
“Band in China” made it clear that Hollywood’s soft power
was no match for Beijing’s economic hard power. Indeed, the American
entertainment industry has failed to have any cultural influence on China,
while China has used its hard power to neutralize the influence of American
culture.
After the episode’s release, the idea that somehow soft
power — which is to say, cultural influence — can be used to decisively change
the behavior of foreign nations is, or should be, dead and buried. Soft power,
when it does exist, flows directly from hard power. In the case of China, the
belief that exposure to U.S. cultural products would help soften and
democratize the country has been proven utterly false. In fact, as “Band in
China” showed, it has been the Chinese Communists who’ve influenced America.
In the mid 1990s, the idea that somehow soft power, by
itself, would shape the post-Cold War world began to take hold. It emerged,
naturally enough, from American universities, where an academic elite was all
too happy to imagine that its influence on the intellectual and cultural
landscape would correct the ugly and vulgar reality of military and economic
strength that had, up to now, shaped human history.
Some European leaders insisted that Brussels would become
the capital city of a new “Soft Power Superpower,” the EU. They honestly
believed that their continent’s culture, lifestyle, and environmental activism
would eventually eclipse American hard power. The fact that the Balkan wars of
the 1990s could only be resolved with the help of the U.S. armed forces did
little to change their attitude.
Boris Johnson’s victory this month in a U.K. election
that was mostly about leaving the EU is yet another sign that European soft
power is nowhere near as attractive as it once seemed. Across the English
Channel, French president Emmanuel Macron has been desperately and
unsuccessfully trying to convince his fellow EU leaders to turn “Europe” into a
hard military superpower. He seems to have given up on the attempt to create a
new soft empire.
Meanwhile, in Asia, it looked like China was slowly but
surely gaining the kind of soft power that flows directly from hard power. For
example, Tibet’s Dalai Lama had for years been a major thorn in Beijing’s side.
His popularity in Hollywood and elsewhere constantly reminded people of the
status of Tibet as a conquered, occupied nation. His attractive demeanor and
his distinctive robes made him instantly recognizable to millions throughout
the world. In many ways he embodied soft power.
But if soft power were as effective a tool of statecraft
as its advocates claimed, no doubt Tibet would have gained some measure of
autonomy by now. Instead, China has strengthened its control and the Dalai Lama
himself has become, at best, a minor and fading celebrity. His status was
perfectly symbolized by the picture of him leaving the Obama White House
through a garbage-strewn back alley. China’s hard power had defeated his soft
power decisively.
Elsewhere, Greta Thunberg and her team have recently
failed to influence the COP 25 Climate Change Conference in Madrid. This shows
how even the best-planned attempts to use soft power to create a sense of mass
panic around an issue can be ignored. After so many decades of environmentally
driven panics, few of which turned out to be justified, people have learned to
dismiss such campaigns and to go on eating meat, driving cars, and adapting to
the petty and annoying ukases of the politically powerful green aristocracy.
Banning plastic straws is not really much of a way to show off one’s ability to
mold the course of human history.
Instead, hard power is making a comeback. Neither China
nor the U.S. believes that cultural influence can substitute for economic or
military strength. Soft power in various forms will never really go away, but
has been proven not to be a decisive force in world politics. Under the
circumstances, it seems fitting that a cartoon satire ultimately drove home the
point.
No comments:
Post a Comment