Few International Relations (IR) notions have captured as much attention in the last few decades as soft power. Although arguably, civilisations and nations have resorted to soft power (or at least the essence of it) and used tools related to it for centuries, Joseph Nye only coined the term in the early 1990s to describe a state’s capacity to shape other states’ foreign policy options through non-coercive measures. The modern notion of soft power emerged in opposition to hard power, which typically uses threat, physical constraint, or economic inducements to force others to act in a certain way, comply with certain norms or make decisions.

Nye underscored three primary soft power sources at a country’s disposal to attract and co-opt others: political values, foreign policies of a non-military nature, and culture (Nye, 2004). This paper analyses the latter as a fundamental source of soft power that, it argues, has been instrumental in shaping the strategic relationship between China and ASEAN, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, since the turn of the millennium. Diplomatically at odds with several countries in the Southeast Asian region during most of the second half of the 20th century, China’s ‘return’ to the region in the 1990s marked a watershed in the deployment of culture as a diplomatic tool. This paper argues that the several cultural and artistic initiatives spearheaded by China in its relationship with ASEAN in the first two decades of the 21st century are part of the larger Chinese quest to improve its image vis-à-vis its ASEAN financial, trade, and strategic partners and re-assert its position as Asia’s nuclear centre of influence in Southeast Asia, threatened by Japan since the 1970s and later by South Korea. To verify that, the paper uses a historical data-collection methodology that includes a comprehensive desk-research review of the type, number, geographical scope, format, and orientation of China’s cultural initiatives in the region. The analysis aims to compare stated intentions with facts. Therefore, the author examines the official declarations, speeches, and official documentation produced by the tandem China-ASEAN and contrasts them with the initiatives and activities implemented. The paper also traces mentions of cooperation arts and cultural events in websites (e.g., ASEAN Secretariat, ASEAN Foundation and the ASEAN Committee on Culture and Information-COCI website, the latter now defunct) and social media posts (e.g., Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Chinese social media platforms such Weibo and Xiaohongshu). This entire body of formal and informal information, never collected in one analysis before, allows the author to comprehensively assess China’s use of cultural diplomacy practices with ASEAN in the last twenty-five years.

In 2016, Chinese President Xi Jinping manifested: “We should increase China’s soft power, give a good Chinese narrative, and better communicate China’s messages to the world”. To Xi, “China must pay more attention to reshape its global image” and to build a positive image as a “responsible, justice-safeguarding, peaceloving, socialist country” (Jinping, 2016). As part of that strategy, and central in its aim of building a more benign reception in the region, China has intensified its cultural and people-to-people exchanges with ASEAN over the past ten years. That geocultural diplomatic approach, designed to strategically support Southeast Asia's economic and political deployment, is built at various levels and through various channels, from official ministerial and staff meetings to organising forums, workshops, artistic festivals and exhibitions. Despite this apparent diversity, these actions are essentially traditional in their form and focus and are often platforms for both China and the ASEAN countries to showcase their own ‘cultural and artistic fortes’ rather than actual cultural exchange initiatives. Likewise, there seems to be a deficit of training and capacity-building mechanisms that lay the foundations for future collaborations led independently by the region’s civil societies. Despite these limitations, it is important to remember that the boom in China-ASEAN cultural exchanges has materialised in a short time. The abundance of current initiatives is remarkable and contrasts with the scant number before the 2010s. This new panorama has provided alternative frameworks for interaction and created new platforms for appreciation of other cultures and mutual understanding. Aligned with Xi Jinping’s hopes, these exchanges might have contributed to diminishing the regional underlying mistrust towards China, assigning the latter a responsible role in building and strengthening the regional communities, from ASEAN Plus One/Three and the East Asia Summit (EAS) to Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) and the Lancang Mekong Cooperation (LMC) forum. More importantly, they encompass its regional influence and support a favourable atmosphere for conducting business with ASEAN, concealing the great trade inequality between the two: in 2022, the trade deficit for ASEAN was USD$137.3 billion (UOB, 2023), almost thirteen times more than in 2010. Likewise, ASEAN’s direct investment in China remains well below that of Hong Kong, Japan, the United States, and South Korea (Santander, 2023).

China’s rapid regional economic and geostrategic rise is also influencing ASEAN’s socio-cultural landscapes. This, to some extent, could be considered a return to the norm in a region that, until the Japanese belligerent irruption during the Second World War and later on in the 1970s with a much more constructive approach, had historically and culturally orbited around China. However, latent suspicions towards China’s fast economic growth and expansion, unresolved historical claims, and territorial and maritime disputes with several Southeast Asian countries pose a significant challenge to the healthy development of these relationships and the formation of a regional community. Multilateral cooperation can help overcome this mistrust, and cultural diplomacy, an attractive soft power instrument, can play a nuclear role in reducing tensions and improving mutual trust. While cultural diplomacy “cannot work miracles” (Goff, 2013), and regardless of the money spent and resources committed, a nation’s negative image may remain (Cull, 2008; Ptáčlová et al., 2021), in the contemporary effort to lead the upcoming East-Asian regionalism, China is leveraging arts and culture exchanges with ASEAN as “pollinators” that can improve the yield in the relationship and help win extra advantage over competitors. China is right to do so as, historically, culture has proven to be a powerful, effective and even decisive soft power tool.

A preliminary analysis of the regional context prompted us to frame the analysis of cultural policies in the Western Balkans countries as an exploration of cultural policies within societies in transition, thus identifying the current state-of-the-art not as a status quo but more precisely as a stage in the broader course of ongoing consolidation. Within this process, our analysis recognises two pivotal components, both of which exert substantial influence over cultural governance, management and the market: the renewal of political and administrative structures and the adoption of a new economic system.
In this scenario, the recent reforms that the countries, all sharing a candidate status to the EU, have undertaken as part of their accession process constitute a third factor of change.

Acknowledging the complexity of the regional context and based on scientific literature and approaches adopted by grey research on the theme, we have designed a framework of analysis opting to identify the main elements, but also the shared critical issues, trends and overarching needs that shape the cultural policy landscape across the region. In particular, seven areas of impact were taken into consideration: legal standards; governance systems; decision-making and institutional competences; cultural rights; funding schemes and supporting programmes; work conditions in the cultural and creative sectors; art and culture-related education and training opportunities.

The research was conducted through the analysis of sources of information and evidence as existing national legislation or legislation under debate; national statistics on public budgets, cultural employment, and cultural entrepreneurship; national strategic documents that guide cultural development; policy papers, reports and scientific research on the subject; analysis of decision making and institutional set-ups; as well as by means of conversations with cultural practitioners and scholars from the region.

Upon gathering extensive data and insights concerning the cultural policy frameworks within each of the six countries under scrutiny, which collectively delineated a regional perspective on the cultural policy landscape, prevailing trends and needs, we leveraged this comprehensive body of information to discern how specific cultural policy initiatives and instruments are implemented in each individual country. This approach prioritised an understanding of the contextual intricacies and local peculiarities, moving beyond a regional overview that might disregard the unique characteristics of each country.