Description

A Study Prepared for the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations: April 2008.

Dear Mr. Chairman: In response to your request, I am submitting a comprehensive memorandum examining the People’s Republic of China’s (PRC’s) activities and ‘‘soft power’’ projection in Asia, Africa, and Latin America. The work was prepared by members of CRS’s Foreign Affairs, Defense, and Trade Division. My understanding is that you may distribute the memorandum as a committee print.

The study addresses the questions you posed when you first asked us to prepare a lengthy study of the topic: How much is China really doing in these regions, and how much do we know about its motivations? What do these widespread PRC activities mean for the United States and for U.S. global influence: are the implications necessarily bad and therefore a demonstrable threat to U.S. interests across the board, or might the implications be benign or in some instances even positive for U.S. interests? How has this increasing engagement affected China’s own policies? Finally, what are the economic and political costs and benefits to China of such international engagement, and are they likely to be influences for greater pragmatism and nuance in PRC policies or serve instead to reinforce more hardline and nationalistic sentiments?

The study opens with an overview section discussing China’s presumed foreign policy goals, the attractions and limitations of China’s ‘‘soft power,’’ and the implications and options for the United States. The memorandum proceeds to an analysis of China’s relations with countries in Latin America and the Caribbean, the Southwest Pacific, Japan and South Korea, Central Asia, Southeast Asia, and Sub-Saharan Africa.