Screening China's Soft Power

<p>Promoting China's cultural soft power by disseminating modern Chinese values is one of the policies of President Xi Jinping. Although it is usually understood as a top-down initiative implemented willingly or unwillingly by writers filmmakers artists and so on and often manifesting itself in clumsy and awkward ways for example the concept of the Chinese dream intended to rival and perhaps appeal more strongly than the American dream modern Chinese values are in fact put forward in many ways by many different cultural actors. Through analyses of film festivals CCTV Confucius Institutes auteurs blockbusters reality TV and online digital cultures this book exposes the limitations of China's officially promoted soft power in both conception and practice and proposes a pluralistic approach to understanding Chinese soft power in local regional and transnational contexts. As such the book demonstrates the limitations of existing theories of soft power and argues that the US-derived concept of soft power can benefit from being examined from a China perspective. </p>