China is after your heart and mind

No country is held with as much awe and suspicion as is China. Discourses on China are emotive and speckled with innuendoes, and with more questions than answers.

To the ordinary chap, China is a puzzling behemoth. China is in our mines, our energy, our telecoms, our transport … China is ubiquitous.

But society indulges Chinese grudgingly. Most people buy Chinese goods for their low prices and would gladly jump to European or American once the wallet behaves.

Chinese too buy the West. Those who schooled in China, like my pal Judy, did not return with a Cantonese or Mandarin accent as would many yuppies that travel to the US.

The fact that the dragon has not endeared itself to the people of the world is not lost on Beijing. That’s why it desires to sing its way to your heart and mind.

As a superpower in waiting, though the EU has prettier odds, China is on an overdrive to manufacture, you got it wrong, not missiles, but pop stars who will croon and perform like western rock stars, in a carefully calculated scheme that it bets will thrust it to the apices of global cultural splendor. This is a classical cultural diplomatic charm offensive.

Music is potent. And China is knows it. It is why even the top dogs of the Communist Party are embracing the musical agenda through such schemes as Music of the Earth - captured in the current Five Year Economic Plan. In fact, president Xi Jing Ping is a fervent believer of soft power so manifest in the dalliance with lyrics. Ping says: “The stories of China should be well told, voices of China well spread…”

And indeed, the potency of such power cannot be refuted once it is subliminally committed on people’s mind. It is Joseph Goebbles, the Nazi Minister of Propaganda who in 1934 explained that “…power based on guns may be a good thing; it is however better and more gratifying to win the heart of a people and keep it.”

And to win your heart, China’s cultural ambassador for the job is singer Ruhan Jia. Doesn’t strike a note? True. But if ‘Project Ruhan’ succeeds, she could be the one topping the charts.

Today, Ruhan is the poster-child of official Chinese music and the quiver for your heart.

Use soft power
No doubt China is an astute student of Joseph Nye, whose reflections on soft power are a must read. Says he: “Great power try to use culture and narrative to create soft power that promotes national interests…” Soft power has to be seductive and Nye considers it as the art of smooth way of constructing admiration and fellowship without firing a single bullet.

Music is persuasive, but more so it excites the emotive parts of the brain and manipulates attitudes. It is also an apparatus of ideological construction – in religion, politics, trade and civil action – always with terrific success.

So China is not off-key in her dream to serenade the world. The Communist Party pays for the studio where Ruhan is being modelled and there is no doubt that the state is engineering every single sign, word, style, so that she will portray the image China craves.

However, critics note that Chinese singers are fluffy – lacking the vigor of their western counterparts. Solution? Copy it!

Producers, just like in manufacturing, are said to be mimicking every pitch, nudity and madness of the West for Ruhan.

The emergence of a super power is a cocktail of factors: a large economy, accumulation of massive foreign reserve, maritime prowess, and large military… all these, China has. What China is lacking, and is grappling with, is the cultural admiration by the world. China wants you to look at the red dragon and say, “Hmm this is cool. Cooler than the stars and the stripes!”

And China knows something about image. Selecting a woman as its musical icon, is by design not default. China is largely masculine – which reins through the structural design of the society.

But manufacturing consent and legitimacy is not an easy enterprise.

China is an Orwellian Republic in spirit and deed – massive state surveillance, excessive state control on communication, and runaway human rights abuses. All these contradict the global edifice of life today.

Human rights record

Indeed, China’s credentials they stand now, are a sharp contrast of what the US was in 1945 as it thrust itself to global chiefdom.

The libertarian adventures of the US extracted from the enlightenment thinkers like John Locke and Adams Smith, and an ambitious progressive Jeffersonian creed of freedom and happiness, were all great ingredients of the making of an admirable power.

Further, the US, used Hollywood to manufacture global consent. The heroes in the films were all American. Indeed, Hollywood remains a bastion of the US soft power. The world copied dressing styles, hairstyles, and even accent.

New York, Washington DC became the paradise of the world. Superstars from Michael Jackson to Michael Jordan all advanced the US culture through the arts.

China may need more than musical talent to sell. It needs to overhaul principles that clash with intrinsic human rights. It must synchronise with the universal way of life. Meantime, the next number is by… Ruhan!

Mr Wamanji is a communications specialist.