The rise in emerging market (EM) hard power over the past decade has been dramatic. The crucial question that arises then is whether soft power in the emerging world has risen commensurately to its hard power. If it has, then the combination of rising soft and hard power will give many EM countries more global clout.

Since the start of the 21st century, using pandas as a diplomatic tool has become increasingly passé, according to Woo. China now uses other forms of soft power to export its culture and influence abroad.

Chinese leaders, determined to persuade America that they mean no harm, have recruited Sun Tzu to their cause. China is hamstrung by a contemporary culture that has little global appeal. Since the present is a hard sell, China is having to lean heavily on the distant past.

After the Dalai Lama fled Chinese-controlled Tibet to India in 1959, several key monks of Tibet have followed suit. “The presence of all the religious heads of Tibet on Indian soil gives India a kind of power that China cannot match... India hosts the emotional and cultural core of a vast part of Chinese territory,” said Tsering Phuntsok of Norbulingka Institute for preservation of Tibetan culture.

China's most expensive film, a bloody blockbuster about the Japanese army's massacre of civilians in Nanjing, will be released in cinemas across the country on Friday as Beijing steps up its efforts to project its "soft power" across the world.

Mr Nye himself drew a link between soft power and Sun Tzu in a 2008 book, “The Powers to Lead”. Sun Tzu, he said, had concluded that “the highest excellence is never having to fight because the commencement of battle signifies a political failure”. To be a “smart” warrior, said Mr Nye, one had to understand “the soft power of attraction as well as the hard power of coercion”.

With the opening up of the country and the entry of the icons of global trademarks, Beijing started to realise the importance of so-called “soft power”. While the Americans have a lot of problems in many parts of the world, their way of life and their culture — particularly their popular culture — are attractive to hundreds of millions of people around the globe.

Public sentiment here against China has worsened since the captain of an illegal Chinese fishing boat allegedly killed a Korea Coast Guard officer on Monday. Public anger further deepened as Beijing only expressed regret, falling short of offering an official apology.