Mandarin Chinese as a means to China’s Soft Power

Abstract

Since China’s rise to the economic, political and military power, she has made efforts to project soft power around the world. Soft power is the ability to get other people to want what you want without having to force their compliance and cooperation. China knows that building a linguistic bridge linking her to the rest of the world has benefits and therefore wants to gain influence on the world’s political and economic stage through the promotion of Mandarin Chinese as a global language. There is an increasing demand for Mandarin Chinese learning around the world, thus the establishment of the Confucius Institute to meet up with the demand. It is the objective of this research to highlight the importance of Mandarin Chinese to China’s soft power. This paper argues that Mandarin Chinese is a means to China’s soft power using soft power as a theoretical framework. This is a qualitative research with secondary data from the library, published papers and internet. The paper finds out three major things. First, China shifted to soft power strategy after the opening-up era in order to achieve a peaceful rise. Second, China establishes Confucius Institutes around the world to market Mandarin Chinese and influence the world positively using soft power strategy. Third, China’s soft power strategy is gaining momentum but not without some challenges.