How do you recognize soft power?

When it comes to soft power, opinions vary and there is no standard answer. Because when soft power is demonstrated, it generally does a lot of harm. If a benchmark is set up, it may kill innovation. For this question, different perspectives will eventually lead to different answers. Hard power and soft power themselves are relative concepts, and their boundaries are sometimes blurred. Something that looks like soft power is also, in some cases, an expression of hard power and vice versa. Another important aspect of the correct understanding of soft power lies in staying true to our original aspiration. Duplicity is easy, but it is difficult to act as one speaks. Staying true to our original aspiration requires us to treat complicated matters with a simple heart, and start to think and practice from the perspective of “seeking happiness for the people”.

Cities, enterprises, universities and other organizations have the concept of soft power. From the perspective of cities, we should first emancipate our minds and have a good understanding of urban soft power from a multidimensional perspective. Joseph Nye, a professor at Harvard University, coined the concept of “Soft Power”, which he defined as the strength of all non-material elements. To put it simply, hard power is visible and tangible, while soft power is something beyond hard power, invisible and intangible, but it exists. Nowadays, with the development of digitalization and the Internet, it has made many things visible that we couldn’t see before, but you may not be able to touch, which are also a kind of soft power. Therefore, there are a lot of things we must emancipate our minds to treat them.

Does GDP reflect urban hard power or soft power?

In measuring the strength of cities, GDP is one of the most commonly used indicators. Urban GDP is a major indicator of a city’s development capacity and economic level and affects the sense of belonging of urban residents. While the level of a city’s GDP reflects more than just hard power–when cities are ranked by economic power, this indicator measures hard power; when it comes to residents’ sense of belonging, this indicator measures soft power. In this respect, hard power and soft power often complement each other and go hand in hand. In addition, GDP per capita is an important dimension, which relates to the living standard of urban residents, including both material and spiritual levels of happiness. Therefore, a comprehensive evaluation system is needed to measure the level of urban development. When discussing urban development, we should not ignore the role of GDP, but we should not only refer to the indicator of GDP. While paying attention to hard indicators, what are the non-material elements we should also think about? The inspirational appeal of culture (values), institutions and mechanisms, etc. are key elements, and there are many more elements that need to be explored.

What are the challenges in improving the soft power of cities?

At first, we have attached importance to hard power construction and neglected soft power construction. For example, we have attached more importance to the building and road construction, especially its speed, but neglected the planning, design, operation and maintenance, etc. of the whole life cycle. This requires us to put more emphasis on soft power, because to some extent, the soft power construction will outweigh the importance of its hard power.

Secondly, the purpose and objectives of enhancing soft power are not clear, and there are even cognitive differences, which will lead to waste of efficiency and hinder the improvement of hard power.

Thirdly, the understanding and research on soft power evaluation indicators and their quantification are not sufficient. The serious lag in this aspect has led to the lack of “correctness” in evaluation. If the improvement effect of urban soft power is difficult to be measured correctly, it will lead to deviation in the direction of efforts and lack of motivation.

How do you improve the soft power of cities?

To improve the soft power of cities, two important aspects of urban soft power must be understood: At first, it is talent flow. Talent flow is an important indicator of a city’s soft power. What elements are there to support the talent flow? From the perspective of individuals and family, it mainly includes ten elements such as food, clothing, housing, travel, entertainment, education, science, culture, health and sports. From the perspective of individuals and enterprise development, it includes economic and socio-ecological (market ecological) elements, which are also the basis for the support of individuals and families. Secondly, it is market ecology. Generally, the researchers believe that the government is the policymaker, thus attributing the construction of market ecology to the responsibility of the government. In fact, enterprises are villains. Because the enterprises are the main body of the market and innovation. How the market and innovation ecology depends on the innovation attitude and level of enterprises. The role of the government and enterprises in improving the market ecology is complementary: the government sets up the stage and enterprises put on the show, both the government and enterprises have a common responsibility to build this stage well. If there are no famous actors on the stage, the stage level is not good enough; If the actor can’t deliver a strong part on stage, the corresponding stage cannot be built.

Enterprises are duty-bound to enhance the soft power of cities. Enterprises and cities complement each other and thrive together. Enterprises are duty-bound to enhance the soft power of cities. Corresponding to the above two aspects, enterprises must play their roles. First of all, from the perspective of human resources, the improvement of urban soft power is conducive to the improvement of enterprise innovation and competitiveness, especially the contribution of human resources. At the same time, enterprises are also the main force to improve the soft power of cities, contributing not only to GDP, but also to human resources. The effect between them is two-way. Secondly, from the perspective of healthy market ecology, institutions and mechanisms create a macro environment for the healthy market ecology, while enterprises, as the main body of the market, inject vitality into healthy market ecology. In addition, from the perspective of entrepreneurship, this is the spillover effect of enterprises in improving the soft power of cities, which is no less than the contribution of enterprises to GDP.

Emancipate the mind: multidimensional empowerment

To some extent, the multidimensional understanding of soft power can also help us clarify the thinking of high-quality development. A high-quality development scenario is big quality, which goes beyond its micro-narrow sense of quality. For example, big quality integrates the concept of sustainability, the evaluation of quality has gone beyond the scope of manufacturing products and meeting customers’ needs, and should consider the factors of sustainable development. High-quality development also depends on high (multi) dimensional empowerment. High-quality measurement is a relative concept. From the perspective of supply and demand, it is a consideration to obtain the competitive advantage of resources, namely, the capability of dimension reduction attack. The same goes for soft power empowerment, and the same is true for enterprises and cities. Taking the infrastructure for example, many conceptual shifts in the infrastructure have been accompanied by perceptions of soft power. From the perspective of high-quality development, the infrastructure has broken through the traditional constraints of hard power. Factors such as education, science, culture, health and sports have enriched the connotation of life and become the necessary facilities of lifeline projects.

In the final analysis, we must emancipate our minds to enhance soft power. Emancipating the mind is to break the boundary and the shackles of thinking so as to achieve no-boundary thinking. We must think from a multiple-dimensional perspective, why are the talents of the world concentrated in developed countries or regions? What is the great soft power behind it? And what is the enterprise’s contribution to the soft power embodied in “developed”? What is the logic behind carbon emissions, big data and artificial intelligence? One possible answer is that: one of the most important factors in promoting soft power is people. All policies, institutions, ecological design and construction should be carried out around people. Only when our cities, enterprises and schools put people first and focus on their growth and development, can the talented people feel a strong attraction, make contributions to the development of cities, enterprises and schools, thus truly improving our city’s soft power.