International Education:

Politics and Policies.

First Activity.

Student: Arturo Fontangordo Rodríguez.

ID: 71.769.247-R.
e-mail: afontango1@alumno.uned.es.
February 2021.
Index.

1. Analyze the shift in global power: from the West to the East. Try to identify the
most important global cities in Asia. ........................................................................ 3
2. Summarize the evolution of the concept of cultural and educational diplomacy. ..... 7
3. Explain the limits and possibilities of cultural and educational diplomacy in the 21 st
century. ................................................................................................................. 10
4. Bibliography........................................................................................................... 12

International Education – Activity 1 2

1. Analyze the shift in global power: from the West to the East. Try
to identify the most important global cities in Asia.

Nowadays, the ‘New World Order’ (NWO) is a concept broadly extended,

incorporated into the mental framework we apply to decodify the reality we perceived
through mass and social media. However, as Josep Piqué (2019) said, this NWO is
more a ‘disorder’ than an order: for the last thirty years, geopolitics is continuously
readapting, without never reaching a stable point, without never providing a fixed,
easily interpretable picture.
After Second World War, people were used to living in a fear equilibrium: two
clear sides, leaded by USA and Soviet Union, with confronted economics (free market
vs. planned economy) and politic systems (liberal democracy vs. communist
totalitarism), both of them with a huge military structure, and a giant damage ability,
through nuclear arsenals able to destroy the whole planet several times, if used. This
was the bipolar world we knew for four decades.
When the soviet bloc fell down in the early 90s, it seemed the final victory of
USA and the ‘American Way of Life’, internationally supported by the Bretton Woods
principles: liberalism for every country, respect to international laws, etc. That’s why
Francis Fukuyama (1992) predicted ‘the end of history’, as the Western values will be
universally accepted and applied: representative democracy, free private initiative in
economy, open society, etc.
As this was partially right for Eastern Europe, the new ‘unipolarity’ soon found
both enemies (like Islamism) and rivals, that is, new emerging powers that aspire to
build a new bipolarity (China), or a multipolar world (Russia). Paradoxically, the USA
greatest victory made the world less Americanized than ever before, with more and
more people and countries refusing to accept the ‘final Occidentalization’.
In fact, if you look at global data, the center of the world is no more in the
Western Hemisphere. Around Malaka strait, more than 50% of global population and
GNP is now concentrated. When you put Europe in the center, you talk of Japan or
Philippines like the Far East. Current reality, looking at the geopolitics map, is that
Europe is the Far West (Piqué, 2019), and this is the way Europeans start to be
perceived all over the world.

International Education – Activity 1 3

 This trend is intensified with the intentional withdrawal of the Anglo-Saxon
countries, which struggle against external influences, instead of trying to expand
themselves. USA has just accomplished four years of ‘America First’ policies, and UK
is leaving the EU, showing that the apparently inexorable European construction
project is much less solid than expected, and could be reverted.
In this context, China intends now to become again what it was for centuries:
one of the greatest political powers in the world; the greatest one for very long periods,
indeed (Ramírez, 2017). When Mao Zedong built his theory about the Three Worlds,
and designated China as the leader for the Third one (Gavari & Rodríguez, 2015), set
the basis for the new, independent foreign politics on the country, exactly in the highest
point of the bipolarity during Cold War.
In 2020, China is not ‘the world’s factory’ anymore. Many of traditional low-cost
manufacturing activities have been relocated to India and Southeastern Asia. Chinese
leaders perfectly understand that hegemony in the world will be decided in terms of
technology and digitalization. That’s why China assigns enormous budgets to R&D and
education. Being a superpower today equals to be a superpower in the cyberspace
(Piqué, 2019).
China is adapting USA strategies in the 19th and 20th centuries: its armies are
now deployed all over the world (harbours in Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Mozambique;
control on Bab al-Mandab strait, via a base in Djibouti, etc.). If Monroe’s doctrine was
‘America for the Americans’ (the formula USA issued to dominate the Hispano-
American republics), China is now the main sponsor of the unofficial ‘Asia for the
Asians’, meaning ‘what happens in Asia is just up to me’.
So, what about the old traditional powers in the Contemporary Age? Russia,
with insufficient demographics, lack of technology (excluding military) and struggling
economy, tries to play a key role in the NWO presenting its credentials in terms of
military force, energy raw materials, and the ability to lead the ‘multipolarity’ proposal
as an alternative to the unipolarity or the new bipolarity.
And EU seems to be stick to the old world, with the only chance of taking
advantage of its soft power: a sort of mixture of individual freedom, public wellbeing,
and cultural sophistication, unable to be sustained for a long time, taking into account

International Education – Activity 1 4

the stagnant (now shrinking, in Covid-19 times) economy and the dramatic evolution
of the demography (whilst nobody seems to care about this).
To complete this bird’s-eye view about todays geopolitics, and the unstoppable
rise of the Asian power, let’s approach to the concept of ‘global cities’. This term, coined
by Saskia Sassen (1991), refers to cities with a tangible impact on global affairs, from
a social and/or economic standpoint. These cities also establish links among
themselves, becoming the main nodes of the global system.
A quick search on Internet can provide dozens (maybe hundreds) of different
rankings of ‘global cities’, depending on different sets of variables. According to
Kangas (2017), “the number of reports has grown to an extent that it now seems fair
to talk about a ‘city index industry’”. Following this author, some of the most relevant
ones are Globalization and World Cities (GaWC), GPCI (Global Power City Index),
Global Cities Index and The 2025 Global City Competitiveness Index.
Regarding Asian cities, Tokyo, Hong-Kong and Singapore appears consistently
in the top ten for all these rankings in 2020, sharing this privileged condition with
London, Paris and New York. Beijing appears in the top ten in three indexes, Shanghai
twice and Dubai once. We haven’t tracked the indexes history, but we wouldn’t expect
to find extraordinary changes in the rankings, according to Kangas conclusions (2017).
Although a superficial analysis could conclude that global cities are ‘all the
same’, this is far to be true. Yes, for sure, you’ll find a flourishing luxury sector in all of
them; and independently of geography and local traditions, you’ll see similar
architecture for premium housing, hotels, and financial centers. Focusing your interest
on this ‘is profoundly incorrect’, according to Sassen (2020). Each global city has a
specific productive function, not all are competing for the same, even if companies and
common people think so.
Hence, we could summarize the main distinctive characteristics of Asian global
cities in this way:
- Tokyo. Its branding has evolved from high technology and ultramodern
urbanism, to incorporate along 21st century many of the concepts linked to
‘Cool Japan’: pop culture in the forms of anime, manga, J-pop, cosplay, etc.
(Otmazgin, 2012). The Olympic Games which should have had place some

International Education – Activity 1 5

 months ago were the perfect scenario to magnify Tokyo’s equity; the
uncertain near future doesn’t enable us to predict their final impact.
- Singapore. The second half of the 20th century brought its consolidation as
a global business and financial center (the leading convention city for the
continent), and a key international hub of air and sea transport. For the new
century, the government pretends to enrich this role, transforming Singapore
in the ‘Global City for the Arts’. There’s still time ahead to see the real
achievements.
- Hong-Kong. Maybe the most intentional one in terms of public statements,
it’s rather interesting to navigate its (obsolete) webpage (https://www.info.
gov.hk/info/sar5/easia.htm#:~:text=Asia's%20world%20city,the%20world%
20city%20of%20Asia.&text=It%20is%20a%20dynamic%20physical,of%20y
our%20goals%20and%20objectives.%22) to realize the ambitious targets
established by the local government right after the devolution to China.
Currently, Hong Kong is in the middle of a new political storm, with the
dismissal of the democratic deputies in the local assembly in November 11 th.
Its final couple to China will determine its future role in the region.
- Beijing. If Olympic Games in 2008 gave a new vision of the city for the world,
directly linked to the Chinese ‘peaceful rise’, once the echoes of the event
dilute, we find again the environmental issues that prevent the city to climb
towards highest position in the rankings. As Wang et al. state: “To accelerate
the transformation of Beijing to a global city, much more attention should be
paid to improve the environmental quality, especially the atmospheric quality
and water quality”.
- Shanghai. The nightlife is a past and present crucial component of its image
as a global city, the fun in the colonial or in the communist eras. In fact,
Shanghai’s progress in global city formation is relatively slow (Zhang, 2014),
related to constraints and barriers in the country (dominant state ownership)
and in the region (competition with other global cities in a relatively
undeveloped market).

International Education – Activity 1 6

 2. Summarize the evolution of the concept of cultural and
educational diplomacy.
Cultural diplomacy doesn’t start in 20th century. Along History, powerful
civilizations always tried to project abroad the best image they could. The dominant
nations tended to impose their arts, language and culture over their neighbours, allied
or foes, conquered or not. This is easily proven by considering just the first ‘global’
superpower (the Roman Empire), which marked Europe and occidental culture forever;
or looking at the shifting power along Modern Age from Spain towards France and then
England, all of them extending their real influence much further than their borders or
armed intervention.
However, the 19th century brought an amazing acceleration of the cultural
contacts and interchanges among the different nations. Industrial revolution developed
faster and safer transportation, liberal revolution almost vanished governments control
on information flows, and scientific progress became a competitive issue to determine
the world hegemony. Own culture and language promotion abroad started to be
considered as a kind of ‘peaceful penetration’ (Rodríguez, in Rodríguez and Gavari,
2015).
In this first period of modern cultural diplomacy, the lion share belonged to
private institutions: scientific societies, foundations, religious orders… played the main
role in showing the nicest face of their origin countries, generating favourable streams
in foreign countries, and creating supportive nodes amongst local elites. The 18 world
expositions, since London ‘Great Exhibition’,1851, until Ghent, 1913, just before World
War I contributed to create for the first time ‘country branding’. Japan, for instance,
managed “to promote itself both at home and overseas not as a colony of the great
powers, but as a modernized nation with a proper culture” (Hirotaka, 2018).
After World War II, cultural diplomacy got increasing significance in the middle
of the Cold War. Both superpowers established complex processes and agencies to
fight the battle for the cultural supremacy, trying to attract allies to their respective
sides, by showing the (real or pretended) advantages and achievements of their
systems. It started to be the object of academic studies, and the same concept evolved
from ‘cultural’ to ‘public’ diplomacy, according to the term coined by Edmund Gullion in
the 60s (Rodríguez, in Gavari & Rodríguez, 2013).

International Education – Activity 1 7

 The limits between propaganda, cultural policy and cultural (or public) diplomacy
are often blurred. For example, if we try to differentiate them according to the main
agents, we could try to claim that cultural diplomacy requires somehow the
participation of the private initiative (even as the real owner, as we saw in some
periods). However, we’ll find that in the Communist countries (including today’s China),
the state-driven activities are almost the only ones, even if the state tries to hide behind
some intermediate institutions. Or, if we try to classify the activities depending on their
contents, the same initiative will be ‘cultural diplomacy’ for oneself, whilst ‘propaganda’
when talking of rivals. Even the context and the past determine the valuation of a
cultural action: establishing Alliances Françaises along Africa and Asia is one of the
most powerful cultural diplomacy programs in the world; trying to promote Japanese
learning in Eastern Asia would be absolutely unacceptable for the countries which were
occupied by Japan in the past two centuries.
If we look at the current research on ‘public diplomacy’, we found an interesting
conceptualization in Cull (2010), who established seven principles for an effective
public diplomacy:
1) Public diplomacy begins with listening: it’s a matter of deeply understanding
foreign publics opinion, through a systematic analysis of all the available
information. In fact, it’s exactly the same process you must follow in a
negotiation: if you manage to know what the other side expects, needs or
wants, you can present your proposal in the right way to be accepted.
2) Public diplomacy must be connected to policy: if your speech doesn’t square
with your facts, your public diplomacy efforts will vanish in the air.
Incoherencies are quickly exposed.
3) Public diplomacy is not a performance for domestic consumption:
sometimes, the real goal is forgotten, and governments focus on convincing
their own peoples about the excellences of the campaigns they launch to
attract foreign opinions. This was the case of the Soviet Union, and, for some
analysts, of current China.
4) Effective public diplomacy requires credibility, but this has implications:
mainly on the side of required complexity when managing different levels of
external activities, not always easy to coordinate. Cull (2010) proposes the

International Education – Activity 1 8

 British model “with a clear division of labour by function –Foreign and
Commonwealth Offices for listening and advocacy, British Council for culture
and exchange, BBC for international broadcasting – with its agreed firewalls
and a sensible system of strategic cooperation at the executive level”.
5) Sometimes the most credible voice is not one’s own: which refers to the
needed balance between governments and private agents, or even between
governments and other regional or local administrations.
6) Public diplomacy in not always ‘about you’: it’s not necessarily about
improving the national image of the state, but also getting more favourable
international contexts.
7) Public diplomacy is everyone’s business: linked to the concept of ‘citizen
diplomat’ in the era of cyberspace and social media, opinions will be built not
only as a consequence of wide activities, but also through the contact and
direct experience between individuals.
To finalize this section, we’ll review the concept of ‘educational diplomacy’,
which can be considered as a specific brand of the broader ‘cultural diplomacy’. In fact,
education has been an essential part of this one, especially during 20th century, as you
can see, for example, in the former Soviet Union or in the students exchange programs
in Japan with the nearest Asian nations (Otmazgin, 2012). Higher education prestige,
or the ability to overcome in a few years centuries of analphabetism and ignorance are
valuable assets, liable to be solid pillars to sustain the whole public diplomacy building.
Focusing on European Union (Gavari, in Gavari & Rodríguez, 2013), you can
follow the evolution of education in Europe, from the ancient liberal state to the current
efforts to make education one of the key strategies to transform the European economy
in the most competitive and dynamic all over the world.
Regarding this topic, maybe we find one of the best examples to understand the
reasons behind present European project undermining. The lack of cohesion and
coordination between agencies jeopardized the final success. As Piqué (2019) said,
the sum of all the EU countries military efforts and budgets are clearly ahead of
Russian investments on defense; nevertheless, it’s obvious than Russian army would
be able to easily defeat EU in case of war. Mutatis mutandis you’ll get a similarly sad
conclusion, when you look at the European education.

International Education – Activity 1 9

 3. Explain the limits and possibilities of cultural and educational
diplomacy in the 21st century.
Rodriguez (in Gavari & Rodríguez, 2013) established two main challenges for
cultural diplomacy in the future:
1) Emergency of new actors, capable of creating networks beyond borders, and
requesting minimum resources to operate. Simple grouped citizen can become
important voices on the international scenario.
2) Modern social media dilute the differences between national and international
audiences.

What both challenges suggest is that the state-controlled (or at least state-
guided) cultural diplomacy is ending. Related to this, we found two recent concepts,
that have been reshaping cultural diplomacy for last years: science diplomacy and
cities role on that.
Science diplomacy remarks the impossibility for any isolated state, no matter
the powerful it is, to tackle current global challenges, especially those related to
demographics and environmentalism. In fact, it’s not new, but nowadays scientific
progress and collaboration reveal as the only way to find solutions for the greatest
world problems. As Roig (2018) states: “Humanity’s greatest challenges – and some
of its most promising opportunities – are regional and global. Increasingly, the world
requires effective partnerships between scientists, engineers, policymakers and
diplomats”.
The advantages of science to foster cultural diplomacy are evident: its traditional
values of transparency, universality, impartiality and rationality make it an
extraordinarily strong element of soft power. Science diplomacy can be conceived as
“a series of practices at the intersection of science, technology and foreign policy”
(S4D4C, 2019). It’s not only about collaboration among scientists: it implies
international political agreements on scientific goals to pursue all together.
According to this latter source, science diplomacy possesses important benefits:
 Endeavours to address common global challenges: allows their identification, and
coordinates the scientific efforts.

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 More productive and sustainable international relations, avoiding the
appropriation of science but mere political interests.
 Evidence-informed foreign policy, aiming to more stable and satisfying
international agreements.
 Better conditions for scientific activities, enabling larger infrastructures and more
complex and projects.
 Improved interfaces between science and public policies, contributing to remove
barriers between policymakers, researchers, and civil society.

Directly linked to the emerging science diplomacy, we find the appearance of

big cities as key agents in public diplomacy. According to Roig et al. (2020), “An
increasing number of cities are defining their strategies for internationalization and
defining mechanisms that ensure an integral approach to foreign action”. Ideal
ecosystems for R&D require universities, private initiative and human resources; cities
rather than nation-states compete for dynamizing the higher education institutions, and
for attracting cutting-edge companies and talent, while digital transformation reinforces
the urban transformation.
We can define city diplomacy as the “formal strategy in dealing with other
governmental and non-governmental actors on an international stage” (Curtis & Acuto,
2018, in Roig et al., 2020). Cities mobilize their resources in terms of human capital
and institutional network as elements of soft power. This new role of cities as principal
actors in public diplomacy implies a sense of multilateral diplomacy, that excludes the
questions on sovereignty in a certain way. That’s why we also find that cities cannot
lead some of the key debates yet, because they simply cannot impose their agenda
when decisions will have to be made at a national level. For this reason, Roig et al.
(2018) consider city networks as “powerful diplomatic actors, but still in the process of
maturation to occupy the space reserved for states”.
We’ll conclude with Brown (2020) by saying that in the new model of cultural
diplomacy “more organizations find themselves in provisional, time limited, contractual
relations […] If diplomats as a professional group have historically tried to appropriate
‘culture’ to ‘diplomacy’, the relationship is now being reversed: cultural institutions
organizations seek to dignify their international work with ‘diplomacy’”.

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 4. Bibliography.
Brown, Robin. A Historical Sociology of the New Cultural Diplomacy. International
Journal of Politics, Culture, and Society, 2020, p. 1-16. DOI: 10.1007/s10767-
020-09386-0.
Cull, N. J. (2010). Public diplomacy: Seven lessons for its future from its past. Place
branding and public diplomacy, 6(1), 11-17. Recovered from: https://
link.springer.com/article/10.1057/pb.2010.4&casa_token=8OvD27Iagx0AAAAA:
aO_wp1ir4hgSBq5iW9sPIssxukIvI2MuII4ljXhZvlcnlmRwfYPyUH2xc8nVf5wZ1M
JOtP_qWNNX2pYBlw.
Fukuyama, F. (1992). The End of History and the Last Man. New York: Free Press.
Gavari Starkie, E., Rodríguez Jiménez F.J. (2015). Estrategias de diplomacia cultural
en un mundo interpolar. Madrid: Editorial Universitaria Ramón Areces.
Hirotaka, W. (2018). The new Japonisme: From international cultural exchange to
cultural diplomacy. Discuss Japan—Japan Foreign Policy Forum, 50. Recovered
from: https://www.japanpolicyforum.jp/diplomacy/pt20181030130003. html.
Kangas, A. (2017). Global cities, international relations and the fabrication of the world.
Global Society, 31(4), 531-550. DOI: 10.1080/13600826.2017.1322939.
Otmazgin, N. (2012). Geopolitics and Soft Power: Japan’s Cultural Policy and Cultural
Diplomacy in Asia. Asia Pacific Review, 19(1), 37-61. DOI: 10.1080/
13439006.2012.678629.
Piqué, J. Universidad Camilo José Cela. (2019, February 28). El mundo que nos viene
[Video]. Youtube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sMMAGcsG1pc
Ramírez Ruiz, Raul. (2016). La historia china desde su propia óptica. Una historia en
espiral. La Albolafia: revista de humanidades y cultura, 7, 141-168.
Roig, Alexis (2018). What is Science Diplomacy? Recovered from:
http://www.scitechdiplohub.org/what-is-science-diplomacy/.
Roig, A., Sun-Wang, J.L., & Manfredi-Sánchez, J.L. (2020). Barcelona’s science
diplomacy: towards an ecosystem-driven internationalization strategy.
Humanities and Social Sciences Communications, 7(1), 1-9.
DOI: 10.1057/s41599-020-00602-y.

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S4D4C. (2019). The Madrid Declaration on Science Diplomacy. Madrid: S4D4C.
Recovered from: https://www.s4d4c.eu/s4d4c-1st-global-meeting/the-madrid-
declaration-on-science-diplomacy/.
Sassen, S. (1991). The Global City: New York, London, Tokyo. Princeton: Princeton
University Press.
Wang, J., Su, M., Chen, B., Chen, S., & Liang, C. (2011). A comparative study of
Beijing and three global cities: A perspective on urban livability. Frontiers of Earth
Science, 5(3), 323-329. DOI: 10.1007/s11707-011-0182-1.
Zhang, L.Y. (2014). Dynamics and Constraints of State-led Global City Formation in
Emerging Economies: The Case of Shanghai. Urban Studies, 51(6), 1162-1178.
DOI: 10.1177/0042098013495577.

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