...Hu told the 17th Congress of the Chinese Communist Party that China needed to invest more in its soft power resources. Accordingly, China is spending billions of dollars on a charm offensive. The Chinese style emphasises high-profile gestures, such as rebuilding the Cambodian Parliament or Mozambique's foreign affairs ministry.

For all its efforts to enhance the soft power, China has had a limited return on its investment. The development of soft power need not be a zero sum game. All countries can gain from finding attraction in one anothers’ cultures. But for China to succeed, it will need to unleash the talents of its civil society. Unfortunately, that does not seem about to happen soon.

In an era of declining military spending, when the Western world moves away from expensive boots on the ground and surgical strikes, and towards working with domestic political movements and UN-led peace-keeping missions, the less-costly “soft power” first championed by Mackay, which measures success not in body bags but in friends won and peaces kept, is the new military zeitgeist.

Moving forward, we need a far more neutral baseline in assessing power based not on a latent accounting of inputs such as nuclear stockpiles and Hollywood films produced, but on outputs: does it work?...As a student of diplomatic theory, the greatest myth elevated by the notion of ‘soft power’ is its self-identification with diplomacy and their collective antithetical role to ‘hard’ or military power.

Joseph S. Nye, who describes the situation as “present day Europe having seizures of over-optimism and Euro-pessimism consecutively,” also draws attention to another dimension of the problem...a failing Europe is the issueat hand in the new geopolitical order...

For a while soft power was undercut because the US reputation was tarnished, but the Arab awakening has demonstrated how powerful American-driven social media are in opening up closed societies. But when IBM invests massively in Africa - which it has identified as the next major emerging growth market - it is also investing in an openness that advances US interests.

Thus, Seoul fully recognizing the limits of its hard power, values the utility and significance of soft power. Over the years, it has harnessed its soft power resources in burnishing its image at regional and global fora.