Can the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor help Beijing Win Pakistanis’ hearts and minds? Reviewing higher education as an instrument of Chinese soft power in Pakistan

ABSTRACT

Announced in 2013 and since then dubbed a game-changer, the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) is a multifaceted project that holds the potential to influence Pakistan’s state and society. This paper examines, in particular, the CPEC’s potential to expand Chinese soft power to win Pakistanis’ hearts and minds. It focuses on what I term the ‘soft end’ of China’s soft power to offer a case study of the country’s use of higher education as a soft power instrument. To demonstrate Beijing’s practices in this regard and shed light on how they are received by the Pakistani government and the public, I draw on selected academic literature triangulated with primary sources such as public opinion polls, media and semi-structured interviews with Pakistani academics and graduates. This case study exposes the non-material aspects of China’s international connectivity and thereby contributes to understanding China’s growing role in South Asia and beyond.

KEYWORDS:

• Soft power
• China-Pakistan Economic Corridor
• higher education
• Confucius Institutes

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Correction Statement

This article has been corrected with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Notes

1. While the phrase ‘winning hearts and minds’ is an Anglo-American metaphor absent in Chinese and Pakistani official narratives, it is commonly used in soft power research, including contexts related to the CPEC (Barrech 2020) and higher education (Hussain and Mehmood 2018, 50). Therefore, this metaphor is employed in this study.

2. By contrast, the new Global Soft Power Index (2020, 37) ranks China as the world’s fifth soft power. The ranking’s authors note that China owes its spectacular climb in the ranking to its rising influence, despite its less-than-perfect reputation.

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Agnieszka Nitza-Makowska

Agnieszka Nitza-Makowska (Ph.D.) is an assistant professor in the Institute of Political Science and International Relations in Collegium Civitas, Warsaw, Poland. Visiting scholar at SciencesPo in Paris (2010) and Humboldt University in Berlin (2018; both projects co-funded by the European Social Fund). Poland’s National Science Centre Miniatura 4 grant holder. She presented papers at international conferences dedicated to Asia (The 25th ECSAS (European Conference on South Asian Studies) Paris, July 2018, Educating Women for Peace and Democracy, European Parliament, Brussels, May 2017). She published in Journal of Peacebuilding & Development and Politics and Religion Journal. Research interests: India, Pakistan, political systems in Asia, soft power, China-Pakistan relations, sustainable connectivity.