Universities are not effective instruments of soft power

In Times Higher Education’s recent feature on whether universities are effective sources of soft power, the interviewed academics generally agree that while Anglo-American universities produce many world leaders, the projection of soft power also depends on whether the wider body of international students has a positive experience.

However, while positive experiences in a country’s educational system and its society may be necessary for the projection of soft power, they are by no means sufficient. Contrary to popular belief, soft power is not just about cultural appeal. It is the power to achieve desired outcomes through persuasion, as the concept’s originator, Joseph Nye, defined it.

If cultural appeal automatically translated into political outcomes, Chinese students who enjoy America’s friendly social environment should, en masse, be supporters of Western democracy promotion efforts in China. Likewise, students from the Global South who are impressed by China’s bustling megacities and high-speed rail links during their time at Chinese universities should all uncritically embrace Chinese investments in their home countries. Yet while each of these outcomes may be occurring to some degree, the results definitely fall far short of each of these rival countries’ fanciful expectations.

A historical example: Mahatma Gandhi attended UCL. Jawaharlal Nehru attended Trinity College, Cambridge. Yet although Gandhi and Nehru were highly anglicised and developed a deep appreciation for British society and laws, they became leaders in India’s national liberation, dealing a definitive blow to the UK’s global standing.

Moreover, the newly independent India may have modelled its political system around liberal values and retained English as an administrative language, but it also pioneered the Non-Aligned Movement and maintained ties with the Soviet Union throughout the Cold War. And, if anything, India now has more sway over the UK’s policy preferences than it ever did, despite many more Indian students attending British universities now than in Gandhi’s and Nehru’s day.

Another example: after the founding of the Republic of China in 1912, large numbers of Chinese students made their way to imperial Japan as part of a wider effort to enhance China’s modernisation. Among them were Chen Duxiu and Li Dazhao, who both attended Waseda University in Tokyo.

Like many other young Chinese intellectuals in Japan, Chen and Li were very impressed by how modern, powerful and civilised Japan had become after the Meiji Restoration. However, both men participated in China’s anti-imperialist May Fourth Movement, sparked by the permission granted to Japan to retain Chinese territories seized from Germany during the First World War.

Chen and Li were vocal critics of the Japanese empire’s pan-Asianist ideology and expansionist foreign policy towards China. A couple of years later, they founded the Communist Party of China. Chinese students’ desire to acquire knowledge from superior Japanese universities did not persuade them that Japan was a benign regional actor on a civilising mission to save them. Far from it.

To be fair, these historical anecdotes might not be perfect analogues of the present. The institutions of public diplomacy and international education in all countries have changed dramatically over the past century. Nonetheless, the point stands that there is a huge difference between liking a country’s society while studying there and becoming sympathiser with its foreign policy preferences, ideological or otherwise.

Nobody should be surprised if some future leaders also resent countries that educated them even if they had no particularly bad experiences during their studies. Students from the Global South are in China to acquire valuable technical skills, not to listen to speeches about how magnificent the Belt and Road Initiative is. And Chinese students in the Anglosphere want to develop their careers and learn English, not to be lectured by non-Chinese people about how terrible their homeland is.

Western academics, including those quoted in THE’s article, are often quick to distinguish between the Chinese government and Chinese people without considering how Chinese people make the same distinction between the US government and American people. Chinese students think very highly of the US, but these warm sentiments rarely translate into negative sentiments towards China, let alone support for hawkish US foreign policy stances. The same could be said about those studying in UK universities, who are quite fond of the UK but not of “Global Britain”.

Nor should politicians expect international higher education to be an instrument of soft power, charged with benefiting one country at the expense of others. Universities are fostering invaluable relationships between peoples during a time of hostility between their governments, and this is extremely valuable in itself.

This entire debate is reminiscent of Republican Senator Tom Cotton’s suggestion in 2020 that Chinese students be banned from studying STEM subjects in the US because allowing them to do so was benefiting a geopolitical competitor. Instead, they should “come here and study Shakespeare and The Federalist Papers. That’s what they need to learn from America.”

This zero-sum obsession with using international education to produce ideological converts does little to effectively enhance any country’s soft power. It only alienates students and scholars who wish to partake in mutually beneficial academic and cultural exchanges without feeling like pawns in a political game.

Sibei Sun is a PhD candidate and teaching assistant in the department of government and public administration at the University of Macau. Before returning to China for graduate studies, he attended San Francisco State University and De Anza College in California.