Last year, the African Nations Cup, the largest international football championship on the continent, began in Côte d’Ivoire, at a stadium that was designed and funded and was built by China. This should not be a surprise for anyone who follows sports, nor is there no new development. The first Chinese stadium in Africa has been completed in more than fifty years. By the end of the millennium, nine African countries will open its capital for what became known as “stadium diplomacy”. The amount and size of these stadiums grew alongside An increasingly strong boost To quickly build infrastructure in poor African countries. Football historian David Golddat wrote:
In the eighties of the last century, China was satisfied with strengthening solidarity in Africa and benefiting from it to exclude and isolate Taiwan. After evaluating the post -Cold War scene in the early 1990s, it became clear to the Chinese leadership that Africa had provided more. The industrial economy and booming population in China will soon require new export markets, lands for agricultural purposes, and above all, to reach the full range of raw materials that their factories consume. Africa, especially with the growth of oil reserves, all these things were abundant, and given the rapid withdrawal of the United States from the continent after the fall of the Berlin Wall, the entry price looked very low.
Stadium diplomacy faced its problems. Some structures are prepared in uncomfortable locations. There is also a very little follow -up from the Chinese, who seem to be often satisfied with dropping a large stadium in an African city and allowing the local government to know what to do with it. In some cases, the stadiums were built less than twenty years ago It has been effectively abandoned. But from the perspective of a foreign policy, China’s investment has resulted in more than its fruits. Soft power, in many ways, is the economy of symbols. You can get a foothold in some of the public scene violently, throw some money in it, then hope that the fans conclude that you are not very bad.
president Donald Trump And Ella Musk, during the first two weeks of their administration, launched a series of Executive orders The federal budget that may benefit China apparently and appears to be not soft to soft energy. The American Agency for International Development, the International Development Organization that helps to advance American interests abroad, has become the latest focus on Musk. This is a little strange given that external aid includes less than one percent of the total federal budget. The administration advisor who comes to a waste cutting company may not be radically for weeks on the water of the water in the hall, but it seems that Musk is completely committed to the assembly of the US Agency for International Development and the landing of the ground under it. One can predict why this happened. Musk may have been told that he could not actually exceed the entire federal government and commitment to dismantling a relatively small program so that it does not appear weak. Or maybe really hates the idea of helping people in other countries, regardless of how to help American interests. However, if you follow the acceptable logic of soft power, it may be both boiling pieces Open opportunities China has to fill the void that the US Agency for International Development leaves.
But are the Americans still interested in competing with China? Are American soft power calls still resonated with voters? At first glance, they seem to do so. Pio Research Poll From last year, I found that about eighty percent of the elderly Americans had an unfavorable vision of China, a number that has risen steadily since the beginning of Trump’s first term in office. In 2017, the feelings were divided in one way or another, as forty -seven percent of the respondents said that they had an unfavorable vision and forty percent, saying they had a favorable view. Last year, reconnaissance From the Global Affairs Council in Chicago, it was found that fifty -five percent of Americans said that “the United States should actively reduce the growth of China’s power,” and fifty percent believe that trade between the United States and China has weakened national security. Some of this can be attributed to the epidemic, but negative fluctuations in feelings started years ago Corona virus disease19 Wuhan began to spread.
Looking at these numbers, one expects both Republicans and Democrats to calm down. During the first Trump administration, it could have been accompanied by an endless charge of the United Nations Liberals from the end of the imminent democracy in the developing global south and the coming of the dominant Chinese power that would extract all minerals from the ground and use anything else. The energy they produced for the human rights violation of every person in their new colony. But there was a little talk about China at all from the Democrats. Trump implemented a ten -cent tariff for China, which, it is worth noting, is much lower than the definitions that it equals against Mexico and Canada. His accent with the president Xi Jinping Nimis was our cold and relatively intimate war.
Among all elected officials in Washington, Tom Couton seems more committed to the Cold War speech-he and colleagues from his colleagues than legislation that would prevent any Chinese individual or action from owning land in the last appearance of the cotton in the United States in the public eye came when the president was interrupted Tiktok, Shou Zi Chew, as part of a hearing in Congress. In a virus clip, which everyone mocked from John Oliver to the banners of the video, Koton continued to chew whether he was a Chinese citizen or if he belonged to CCP, and Chew, who is Singapore, continues to remind the cotton that China and Singapore are not in the same country. Cotton and his professional life are eager, they feel almost a historical paradox at this stage, from the remains of 2020 when everyone was looking for Trump’s successor, and he did not realize that the king was taking a nap.
The talk of China, of course, does not come down to one side of the corridor: on Tuesday, David Axelrod, the democratic strategic expert who made his name during the Obama administration, appeared. On CNN To comment on Trump is still blurry, but it is definitely amazing, plans to “take over” the Gaza Strip. “Imagine how the Chinese explain this while they are decreasing Taiwan,” said Axelrod. This point, although it was fair enough, also felt old and different when the war was, in itself, will not be enough for a political story, and when we all thought we were about to armed conflict with China. Does any American citizen, upon hearing Trump’s plan for Gaza, transform their ideas into what China should think about all this? The Cold War almost feels a rhetorical gesture – something people say when they need to face the reasons that make their political opponents spoil, again.
Last year, she wrote that the ban on Tiktok is now a serious threat to civil freedoms and freedom of expression. Employing of Jameel Jaffer logic, CEO of the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University, I said that Americans have the right to receive advertising, even if advertising did not paint this country in particular favorable light. Fears related to stolen data that are often felt beside this point-all of our data can already be purchased at a cheap price of open market Just turn off the part that records the data and focus on its new creation. It looks like in the “Little Budgets” of Woody Allen, where the character that Tracey Ullman plays in a cookie bakery so that her husband can use the store wall to reach a bank and steal a bank. The cookie store starts, making it wonderfully rich, which ends the need for the bank stealing.
But this does not mean that the millions of hours that the Americans have consumed on Tikhak did not have a zero effect on what they feel towards the world, and China, in particular. Tiktok gave millions of Americans a look at China full of English -speaking tourist guides in loud and wonderful cities such as Chongqing; Magician farmers with a net in the green countryside; Fun lighting sellers. Fun, groups of friends who wear hot dinner clothes. During the very short period in which Tiktok went not to communicate in America, thousands of previous users went to Rednote, a Chinese Tiktok alternative, where happy Chinese internet users themselves and their country presented the flood of American digital refugees. This gentle cultural exchange was short -term and had always had any real effects, but Tijok may have changed the positions of millions of Americans towards their alleged enemy. The most effective propaganda that China could produce was very normal and has worldly images of daily life. Tijok took the illusion that many Americans had around the polluted sky, hordes of the military police, and slave -like working conditions. China made it look normal, even sometimes cold.
Tiktok, perhaps by chance, has become a form of stadium diplomacy. Give the Americans the algorithm and the public’s dynamics they want, and they will eventually conclude that it cannot be this bad. It is difficult to know if none of this is intended, but the overall general feelings about China do not seem to be in line with the increasingly warning invitations. when DibsicA Chinese International Company has released a new model that can complete the same tasks enjoyed by the American artificial intelligence companies, but in a small part of the computing cost, it was called many prominent members in the technology industry, including investment capital, Mark Anderson, ” Sputnik the moment “which indicated that the United States was now in the male arms race with China. The response was from most of the audience mostly. (Certainly there was no crowd of support for Silicon Valley or companies such as Openai and Anthropor to win the race to artificial general intelligence) A great application. China has already our data. “
One of the most common ideas and discussed from the previous election season came from the Economist Tyler Cowen. Quinn was trying to understand the reason for the spread of general feelings towards Trump and included a number of reasons why this “strange transformation” had happened. Likewise, we may be in the early stages of the transformation of the atmosphere when it comes to America’s relationship with China. It is clear that the hawks and our own forms are from the diplomacy of the stadium, regardless of whether the programs are useful or not, are no longer a priority. Trump and Master may have a variety of reasons for the US Agency for International Development, but I imagine that part of it comes from the fact that most Americans do not particularly care about diplomatic assistance programs or geopolitical effects to withdraw from the international theater. Trump, at least at the present time, appears to agree. Although he and Musk are likely to have been wasted any of the intention that he may pass after the elections and the inauguration, the decision to withdraw mostly from the Cold War Anti -Eden War Discourse for the Biden Administration may accurately reflect the will of the voters. Let China build its stadiums abroad, They seem to say. We have our own problems here. There is an implicit surrender in all of this, which may be reflected in the dismantling of Americans from the US agency. ♦
