In recent years China has embraced the idea of cultural soft power.
This lecture first introduces socio-historical reasons behind this new Chinese approach . It then discusses how the party-state aims to influence the international community through public diplomacy. On the Chinese agenda are the highlighting of its peaceful rise and becoming de facto leader of the third world. In the end, the Communist Party seeks domestic legitimacy through international recognition using cultural soft power.

Jukka Aukia is a Doctoral Candidate at the Centre for East Asian Studies, University of Turku, Finland. He has recently worked as a Visiting Scholar at Fudan University, Shanghai. He holds a Master of Science in Contemporary Asian Studies from the University of Amsterdam. During the academic year 2010-2011 he did research at the Jiao tong University, Shanghai, and the fall semester of 2012 he worked as a Guest Researcher at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, Beijing.