0519098 - OÚ 2020 RIV AT eng J - Journal Article
Hrubý, Jakub - Petrů, Tomáš
China's cultural diplomacy in Malaysia during Najib Razak's premiership.
Austrian Journal of South-East Asian Studies. Roč. 12, č. 1 (2019), s. 111-129. ISSN 1999-2521
R&D Projects: GA ČR GA15-21829S
Institutional support: RVO:68378009
Keywords : China-Malaysia Relations * Confucius Institute * Cultural Diplomacy * Soft Power * Tertiary Education * Zheng He
OECD category: Political science
Method of publishing: Open access
Result website:
https://aseas.univie.ac.at/index.php/aseas/article/view/2911/2530DOI: https://doi.org/10.14764/10.ASEAS-0016

This article aims to provide an analysis of China's cultural diplomacy (CCD) in Malaysia in the latter years of the premiership of Najib Razak (2015-2018). It intends to reflect on the efforts China has been exerting in order to increase its soft power in the Southeast Asian nation. The authors have identified and analyzed four major fields of CCD: the activities of two Confucius Institutes, the first overseas campus of a renowned Chinese university, invocations of shared history, embodied mainly by the figure of the legendary admiral-eunuch Zheng He, regularly commemorated as China's historic envoy of peace, and Malay translations of classical Chinese novels. The article's findings reveal an intricate pattern of networks involving various actors, both Chinese and Malaysian, state, semi-state, and non-state, pursuing their own particular interests, which tend to converge and overlap with the aims of Chinese cultural diplomacy. The implementation of CCD has also been formed by the local political and societal structures: a) a 'special' relation between Razak's cabinet and the PRC leadership, revolving around party-based diplomacy and intensive economic cooperation especially between 2015 and May 2018, b) the presence of a large Chinese community, which provides opportunities and, at the same time, creates limitations for the China's cultural diplomacy practice in Malaysia.
Permanent Link: http://hdl.handle.net/11104/0304125