Climate action is where China can really tell its story well

China’s zero-Covid policy and ‘wolf warrior’ diplomacy have overshadowed its soft power efforts, but a shift in focus to the climate crisis could change that
Given the major commitments it has already made to cut carbon emissions, China should be positioning itself as a leader in climate diplomacy

Tracey FallonandNicholas Ross Smith

Published: 3:30am, 3 Nov 2022

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Following Xi Jinping’s anointment as General Secretary of the Communist Party of China in 2012, he highlighted the need to “tell China’s story well” to make the most of its meteoric rise. This meant investing significant time and resources in wielding “cultural soft power” abroad.

Yet, a decade on, the response from outsiders is that China’s soft power efforts have been a resounding failure. Global perceptions of China have grown worse in recent years, except in a few countries like Pakistan and Russia.

Consequently, at the recent 20th party congress in Beijing, Xi reiterated the importance of external communications when he pledged to “present a China that is credible, appealing, and respectable”.

Before the pandemic, China’s efforts to enhance its soft power by combining attractive cultural resources with extensive multilevel channels for public diplomacy were seen by some as quite successful. Yet, China’s current predicament has rendered it something of a soft power paper tiger, particularly in the West.

While the rest of the world is entering the final weeks of 2022, China remains firmly stuck in 2020 with its “dynamic zero-Covid” policy still in force. This policy has limited China’s ability to facilitate the most basic ingredient of public diplomacy: people-to-people exchange.

The positive news is that foreign students, arguably the biggest success story of China’s increased global engagement to date, are allowed back into the country after two years of strict entry rules.

A neighbourhood in lockdown in Shanghai’s Changning district on October 7. Photo: AFP

Yet tourism, another significant soft power resource for showcasing China’s cultural heritage, remains closed with no clear timetable for reopening.

With people-to-people engagement severely hampered, China has had to rely on state-led social media accounts and broadcast channels to reach foreign audiences. While China has an impressive cyber presence, its online efforts to project itself as a peaceful and egalitarian force have often come unstuck because of events abroad.

How and why China’s foreign policy has failed Chinese people

The recent incident in the British city of Manchester where a Hong Kong protester was allegedly assaulted by Chinese consulate staff is a clear example of how China’s public messaging can be instantly rendered useless.

Furthermore, ambiguity around China’s position on Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, as well as officials’ tendency towards defensiveness when being challenged, has left China with few audiences (especially in the West) that are willing to buy its carefully curated narratives at face value.

Of course, China’s public diplomacy efforts are also hindered by a domestic audience which views “wolf warrior” behaviour favourably. Such two-level games are ubiquitous in public diplomacy regardless of the country, but Beijing appears particularly beholden to its domestic audience.

Yet despite these impediments, China is not without options to better tell its story.

One area in which China could make a significant global impact is climate action. Although it trails the US in per capita emissions, China is still by far the globe’s biggest gross producer of greenhouse gases, accounting for nearly a third of all emissions. Any serious long-term solution to climate change requires significant input from China.

Unlike the pandemic, combating climate change is something that Beijing should see as a “slam dunk” diplomatic issue. Furthermore, climate change is an issue that resonates with both domestic and international audiences, reducing the domestic-overseas trade-offs that arise in other areas.

US-China competition won’t help battle against climate change

Climate commitments made by China in recent years have already made an international impression. In 2020, Xi announced at the 75th General Assembly of the United Nations that China would peak its emissions in 2030 and aim to be carbon neutral by 2060. This announcement was so bold and unexpected that Foreign Policy magazine ran the headline: “Did Xi Just Save the World?”.

These positive steps have been continually overshadowed internationally by the missteps that the Communist Party has made. But given that climate change sits at the top of the global hierarchy of threats, even above nuclear war and pandemics, it is something that China needs to keep emphasising.

With the 2022 UN climate change conference, or COP27, due to start in less than a week, China has been given an opportune tabula rasa to start telling its story better, starting with how it can help “save the world”.

Tracey Fallon is an assistant professor of China studies at the University of Nottingham Ningbo China

Nicholas Ross Smith is an adjunct fellow at the University of Canterbury, New Zealand