'Public diplomat' wants foreigners to see the 'true China'
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Despite his journalism credentials, Zhao is, in essence, a public relations man for the Chinese government – intriguingly, an accusation also laid at his interrogator, Doris Naisbitt, whose recent China's Megatrends (2010) was roundly condemned as an outdated exercise in middlebrow analysis and described by TIME magazine as a "simplistic, groveling and ill-informed treatment of the world's next superpower" (it also, interestingly, contains the line that "most of the concerns about the [Chinese] Internet are in Westerners' heads").
Both the Naisbitts and Zhao are engaged in a public diplomacy battle on behalf of China, a fight to present China to the world from both a governmental and public perspective and meanwhile enhance the understanding of a "true" China, including its traditions, social development and economic status.
The main flaw is that an accurate, scientific assessment of the "public's" viewpoint is near-impossible to gauge in a country of 1.3 billion.
The book skirts this predicament but delves into ways of enhancing China's soft power, Web diplomacy and cultivating a better image.
Zhao notes that, in Western media, it is often regular citizens or college professors quoted talking about China. Conversely, China is engaged in presenting itself mostly through the mouths of officials or via State media.
"In most cases, we are doing the propaganda thing, instead of cross-cultural communication," Zhao said. "And the result is, unfortunately, low credibility."
Zhao compares China's social reality to an apple: it is much better, he says, to give the whole fruit to a foreigner when presenting China rather than just apple jam, juice or even vitamin C.
"Foreigners can bite and taste the apple by themselves, and it gives them room to digest and ponder it."
Zhao said he wants to explain and write on China in an easy and understandable way even high school students can get it. "Tell them ABC, not XYZ."
Over the past few decades, Zhao has left no stone unturned chumming up to foreign counterparts and impressing them with his soundbites.
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