Soft Power: The CCP Uses China’s Traditional Culture for Propaganda

A group of Chinese have raised concerns over a performance, Lake Honghu, coming to the Sydney Opera House on Nov. 4, 2018, calling it part of the Chinese Communist Party's strategy to wield soft power and exert influence in Australia. A poster of Lake Honghu (L) on a fridge in an Asian grocery store in Hurstville, NSW on Oct. 23, 2018. (R) A photo of the Sydney Opera House in Sydney, Australia, in 2018. (L): Mimi Nguyen Ly/ (R): Loritta Liu/The Epoch Times)

“A country with strong soft power can easily spread its ideology and values, thus able to control and manipulate global public opinion,” said a December 2007 China Central TV report. The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) considers the ability to spread its culture of violence in the form of art to be a pivotal factor in its soft power campaigns.

According to the “Nine Commentaries on the Communist Party,” the CCP replaces Chinese traditional culture with its Party culture of “deceit, malice, and struggle” in order to maintain its tyranny. At the same time, it puts up superficial cultural manifestations as a façade to deceive people and increase its soft power globally.