The Report of the 18th National Congress of the CPC pointed out that we must earnestly promote public diplomacy. The key phrases here are “we” and “earnestly”. Who are “we”? What kind of organizations and people does it refer to? How can be “earnest”? These questions are worth the contemplation of people like us who are performing China’s public diplomacy.
The Chahar Society where the writer is working with is mainly focused on the promotion of Chinese public diplomacy in the past three years. Hereby, the writer would like to offer some personal views over these questions based on his own experiences.
“We” refers to the practitioners, researchers and disseminators of China’s public diplomacy.
Practitioners are the main actors of the public diplomacy. It is them that carry outChina’s public diplomatic activities with other countries. According to their different roles in public diplomacy, there are the decision-makers, executors and participants. Decision-makers are institutions that formulateChina’s overall diplomatic strategies and policies. Executors are specific functional organizations that work for the realization of national public diplomatic goals under the guidance of overall strategies, such as foreign affairs departments within state and government agencies, NGOs, trans-national companies, media and people on outbound visits etc. Researchers are organizations and people such as government think tanks, university research institutes, and other institutes that take public diplomacy as their study subject and mainly work on Chinese and foreign public diplomatic strategies, theories, policies and cases. Disseminators are traditional and new media agencies such as agencies for international communication in the traditional fashion and overseas branches of central media, which report on the activities of public diplomatic practitioners and the research outcomes of public diplomatic researchers.
Practitioners focus on getting the work done. They have rich experiences and deep understanding about public diplomacy, but don’t have the time and ways to analyze and summarize these experiences due to heavy work load. Focusing on academic position and influence, researchers have time and tools to do analysis and research over public diplomacy, but lack actual experience of public diplomacy or face-to?鄄face exchanges with the practitioners in most cases. Content providers (practitioners and researchers) provide relevant products according to their own needs and purposes, seldom thinking about the actual need of disseminators. Meanwhile, disseminators only choose information for dissemination based on recipients’ interests and their own favors without the energy and time to carefully analyze and select the content.
This inevitably leads to various degrees of “disconnection” among the practitioners, researchers, and disseminators. From the perspective of overall development of public diplomacy in the long run, it is necessary for the three to cooperate soundly and draw on each other’s strength, thus gaining the effect of “1+1>2”. Otherwise, if they talk and act in their own silos, neither would their advantages be fully tapped, nor could their shortcomings be diminished, which would compromise the interests ofChina’s public diplomacy.
Interactions among the three is the primary way to “earnestly promote” public diplomacy.
A precondition for effective interaction is “a clear strategic positioning for each of them”, i.e. what is their strategic focus? It should be an intersection of “what do I want to do”, “what shall I do” and “what can I do”. “What do I want to do” is decided by the subjective will of the doer. A common problem is “I want to do everything” or “I want to do what you do”. For example, high attention is always given to major countries, especially theUnited States. “What shall I do” is decided by the work environment of the doer. Different agencies, social groups and research institutes have different purview or field according to laws, regulations and rules of the government. “What can I do” is decided by the resources and capability of the doer, i.e. what is my advantage that can help me reach anticipated results? The intersection of the three aspects constitutes the strategic positioning of the doer—“what should I do?”
Generally speaking, the practitioners should clearly know their audience and way of act: which region and country should I focus on? Who is the major target group? Which way of act is the most favorable? For the researchers, they should decide what their main target of study is: Chinese or foreign, any certain country or practitioners like governments, people’s congress, CPPCC, parliaments, cross-border companies or social groups? The disseminators should specify their main content: the public diplomatic activities carried out by certain practitioners in certain countries.
Model one of cooperation: case study—interaction between the practitioners and researchers
People always say that theories must be combined with practice. Due to the intrinsic difference between theory and practice, it is very difficult to bring the two together. But case study can solve this problem by bridging them. Every public diplomatic activity by the practitioners is vivid material for study. The practitioners should open doors to let the researchers in to organize these materials and write case reports, which are not only of guiding significance for the practitioners, but can also help to summarize experiences and general laws based on the study of many cases. Researchers should walk out of their ivory tower, not just introducing and publicizing foreign theories and cases of public diplomacy, but also going to the front line of public diplomacy to study numerous practical cases and gradually come up with public diplomatic theories with Chinese characteristics.
Model two of cooperation: in-depth cooperation between the content providers and the disseminators
For the disseminators, both the practitioners and the researchers are content providers. Interaction between the content providers and the disseminators has three levels: the first is news report, i.e. reporters are invited to the scene, where the practitioners carry out activities or the researchers publish research results. The reporters cover the event or have interviews so as to let more people know about the content. This is the most common way and the lowest level of interaction. The second is to design the theme and content jointly and let the media cover it through special report or column. The “World Knowledge-Chahar Roundtable”, cooperation between the Chahar Society and the World Knowledge Magazine is an example of this kind. The third is to jointly organize activities or research projects during the whole process of which the two sides can have deep cooperation and comprehensive interaction for win-win results. The “Chahar Annual Conference on Pubic Diplomacy” co-organized by the Chahar Society and the Nanfang Media Group is a successful try in this field. The organization committee of the conference is a mix of both sides and the theme as well as sub-themes of the conference are decided through bilateral consultation, so is the list of invited guests. The Chahar Society is mainly responsible for the content of the conference while the Nanfang Media is responsible for publicity and an outsourced contractor is responsible for conference logistics. This kind of cooperation has been proven to be effective.
Model three of cooperation: establishing platform organization to realize tripartite interaction
The so-called platform organization is an organization that carries out activities among different groups to the benefit of all. Among the Chinese public diplomatic platform organizations, there are not only time?鄄honored CPAFFC, CPIFA and CAFIU, but also young ones such as the China Association for Public Diplomacy, 11 local associations for public diplomacy, as well as non-governmental think tanks including the one the writer is working with—the Chahar Society.
These platform organizations have the triple role of the practitioners (organizing activities), the researchers (carrying out research) and the disseminators (setting up media agencies). Moreover, as their main modus operandi, they also mobilize and organize other national or local public diplomatic practitioners, researchers and disseminators for tripartite interactions, which are in the interest of the growth and development of each side and can bring about multiplier effect.
At the current stage, most of these associations are still young and their platform function is still underdeveloped and needs constant improvements. But it is heartening to see that exchanges and cooperation between local public diplomacy associations are already kicked off. For example, the two Associations for Pubic Diplomacy Shanghai andWenzhouhave jointly organized advanced workshop on public diplomacy for two years in a row, and the Associations for Public DiplomacyGuangdongand Huizhou have organized training courses on public diplomacy at the China Foreign Affairs University. As one of China’s public diplomacy platform organizations, the Chahar Society hopes that the China Association for Public Diplomacy will soon play the role as a national platform (not just the association of MFA), and various local governments will vigorously support the establishment of local associations as platform organizations for local public diplomatic activities.
How to earnestly promote public diplomacy is a big and new topic. Firstly, we need the efforts of the practitioners, the researchers and the disseminators. And then we need to bring the three together for interaction. As both the form and content of tripartite interaction are in constant development and change, deeper interaction among them is conducive to the promotion of public diplomacy.■
(The writer is the General Secretary and senior researcher of Chahar Society.)
(Translated by Ai Hong)