Soft power is not just about movies and television shows, but the ability to attract people to one’s country through cultural influence and persuasion. Tourists and international students traveling to China interact with the people and culture, influencing their worldview along the way. How effective is China’s soft power on a collective and individual level and what is the impact of China’s soft power on the rest of the world?
Irene Wu joins the National Committee on May 8, 2025 to discuss soft power and how countries like China use it.
Irene Wu
Irene S. Wu, Ph.D. is author of Measuring soft power in international relations (Lynne Rienner, 2024). She is a lecturer in the Communications, Culture, and Technology Program of Georgetown University and a former fellow at the Wilson Center for international Scholars. Her other books include Forging trust communities: how technology changes politics (Johns Hopkins, 2015), and From iron fist to invisible hand: the uneven path of telecommunications reform in China (Stanford, 2009). Her degrees are from Johns Hopkins and Harvard Universities, with additional studies at National Taiwan Normal University, University of Puerto Rico, and the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences in Beijing, China.