Mobilizing Overseas Chinese to Back Up Chinese Diplomacy
We would like to bring to your attention a new article "Mobilizing Overseas Chinese to Back Up Chinese Diplomacy: The Case of President Hu Jintao’s Visit to Slovakia in 2009" by Rudolf Fürst and Gabriela Pleschová published in the impacted journal Problems of Post-Communism (Volume 62, Issue 1, 2015).
The Chinese view of hard and soft power in foreign policy differs from the Western understanding of these terms. The authorities’ hard-power practice of mobilizing expatriates to back up Chinese diplomacy and suppress critics overseas undermines China’s soft-power efforts in the West. The street clash that occurred during President Hu Jintao’s visit to Slovakia in 2009 is a case in point.