China's Soft Power Analysis Case Study of Economic & Development Initiatives in Pakistan

Abstract

The China and Pakistan partnership started in 1951 and has now evolved into being strategic, reciprocal and can sustain itself. In this bi-polar relationship it has over the year stronger from a raw political-military alliance to play the role of an economic and even developmental strategic cooperation. This paper applies the idea of The China Model to analyze the opportunity and challenge of China’s soft power approach to its economic interaction and cultural exchange with Pakistan. On the theoretical level, the present study derives from Joseph Nye’s soft power theoretical approach to outline how and to what extent attraction is used in instead of coercion to build influence in Pakistan. Likewise, the dawn of China Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), as part of Belt and Road Initiatives (BRI), is also the foundational and core aspect of soft power strategy in Pakistan which embodies a purest Form of infrastructural development cooperation, energy synergy and socioeconomic Pakistan’s enhancement. In addition to the analysis of the Chinese Characteristics of Soft Power, this research investigates how China uses soft power such as education, through Economic engagement, CPEC, Confucius Institutes, skill development, scholarships, and aid as ways of achieving the hearts and mind of Pakistan and its citizens on the other hand achieved her goals in order to project the Chinese version of Social, political and Economic, trad market into the region. As this work also categorized the missing links in the Chinese soft power synergy incidence it pointed out how cultural, education and economic policies could facilitate more harmonizing direction to enhance the soft power incidence in China. This work provides a complexity perspective of the Sino-Pak relations in the wider framework of China’s increasing dynamics in the South Asia region. It offers a major knowledge for the policy makers or the scholars to understand the dynamics of the soft power and economic sanction in bilateral relation and system.