week 3 summary

It time to summarize again for a new past week, week 3. But I'm afraid that I cannot write much today for I need to go bed earily tonight so that I can get up earily tomorrow morning to go with Qi Xin to the market place. I go with Qi Xin because I want to more life experience in Melbourne.

Qi is a friend of Huang Kai and a warmhearted your man. He just graduated from Monash and now runs a car decoration store with his girlfriend Meng. Bot of them are very kind people. I'm so luck to have them as my friends. They are like sunshine of Melbourne, making life here warm in cold rain days. I'm happy if I can help Qi Xin somewaht.



Things are not well in my home and homecountry. Mother is going back home, I mean Guizhou, with sisiter, for she don't want to live with my second sister and her husband along in BJ after I came to Melbourne. I understand her's choice. Actually, I'm the only one that she can rely on comfortablely, for the reason I'm her son. I feel so sorry that I decide to came to Melbourn to study and cannot stay with her at least for one year.

I wish I can go back home next year to live with her again.



My former firends, Yu Wei and Xu Zhiyuan, together with some other guys, finally left the Economic Observer last week. Someone (actually including myself) call this an earth-quaking event in the newspaper. It's no doubt that the event will affect the newspaper in some ways we cannot predict so far. But who can be sure whether this cannot be a good divorce for two lovers who already no longer love eath other? I wish both sides can go well in the future.





Before ending this summarize, I attached an reading notes here. This is the first one I finished. It a book wrote by Joseph Nye, a very active and heavy thinker of US foreign affaris. I wish to finish another book in the coming week.





Reading notes on



Soft Power

By Joseph S. Nye, JR



The changing nature of power



Quotations:

Power is like the weather. Everyone depends on it and talks about it, but few understand it. Just as farmers and meteorologists try to forecast the weather, political leaders and analysts try to describe and predict changes in power relationships.

Power is also like love, easier to experience than to define or measure, but no less read for that.



Power: the ability to get the outcomes one wants

Power need to be defined with the context, so resource doesn’t necessarily translate into power

Hard power: military and economic might, get outcomes by command and coercion, trade and bribe,

Soft power: get outcome that you want through co-opts rather than coercion, threat, trade, and bribe


Hard
Soft

Spectrum of behaviors
Command coercion inducement
Agenda setting attraction, co-opt

Most likely resources
Force, payments, sanctions, bribes
Institutions, values, culture, policies





Source of soft power

Culture, political values, foreign policies



Three type of power
Behaviors
Primary currencies
Government policies

Military power
Coercion

Deterrence

Protection
Threats

Force
Coercive diplomacy

War

Alliance

Economic Power
Inducement

Coercion
Payments

Sanctions
Aid

Bribes

Sanctions

Soft power
Attraction

Agenda setting
Values

Culture

Policies

Institutions
Public diplomacy

Bilateral and multilateral diplomacy



Terrorism and the privatization of war

Two trends make terrorism more lethal and more difficult to manage

One, the progress in science and technology

Highly complex and technological nature of modern civilization’s basic system

Democratizing technology

Information revolution providing inexpensive means of communication and organization



Second, change of motivation and organization of terrorist groups

Change from limited objective to unlimited or retributive objectives



Sources of American soft power

Largest economy, half of the global-500 companies, 62 of the top 100 global brands, 8 of the top ten B-schools, films and TV programs, destinations of overseas students,


Soft power of other countries

Japan has more potential soft power resources than any other Asia country

The first non-western country modernized, NO. 1 in number of patents, NO 3 in R&D expenditure, third in international air travel, 2nd in book sales and music sales, second in the number of Internet hosts, No 1 in development assistance, first for life expectancey

Limit of Japan’s soft power: never fully come to terms with its record of foreign aggression in the 1930s, serious demographic challenges



China: looming giant in Asia together with India

Symbol of China’s soft power:

Literature, Gao Xingjian,

Film, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon

Sport star: Yao Ming,

Event: 2008 Olympic Games

Technology: the manned space flight

Economy: long-term and high speed growth


Limits of China Soft power:

The ruling party fears allowing too much intellectual freedom

Resists outside influences

Corruption in government

Taiwan issue

Fear of China threat

Conclusion: The soft power of Asian countries is like to increase in the future, but at this stage they lag in soft-power resources behind the United States and Europe


American Foreign Policy Traditons

Walter Mead used the device of identifying these traditions with the names of past leaders as a helpful way to distinguish the traditions

Alexander Halmiton: realists, prudently purse national interest and commerce

Prudent, but lacks a moral appeal to mny at home and abroad

Andrew Jackson: populists, emphasize self-reliance and frequent use of coercion

Robust and tough, but lack staying power and allies

Jeffersonians: advocate the pursuit of democracy by being a shining beacon to others rather than “gong forth in search of dragons to destroy”

Have plenty of soft power, but not enough hard power

Willsonians: idealists who follow Woodrow Wilson in seeking to make the work safe for democracy

Long on soft power, but sometimes the idealism leads to develop unrealistic ambition: their foreign policy vehicles often have strong accelerators but weak brakes and are thus prone to go off the road

New:

Neoconservatives: stress the importance of democracy, but drop Wilson’s emphasis on international institutions