Soft Power

China has frequently employed what Joseph Nye has described as 'soft power'. Sometimes, China is successful. Sometimes, China gets exposed, for instance in Zambia and Sudan. An article in the Christian Science Monitor describes:

"The vast majority of this oil, 64 percent, is sold to China, now the world's second-largest consumer of oil. And while neither Khartoum, China, nor Petrodar release any statistics – this is generally believed to be an oil deal worth at least $2 billion a year."

And the backlash is certainly something the Chinese has not expected:


"This negative image of Beijing as a neo-colonizer could not be further from the way China – a country never involved in either the colonial "Scramble for Africa" of the 1800s or the African slave trade – wants to be perceived here."

Whether justified or otherwise, after all the Chinese are paying:

""[The Chinese] moved us away so we would not see what was going on. They were stealing our oil and they knew it," says Abraham Thonchol, a rebel-turned-pastor who grew up near Paloich. "Oil is valuable and we are not idiots. We were expecting something." "

China has become a global power and the means of employing soft power can lead to local reactions:

"Locals blame their lot on oppression by Sudan's Islamist government and the long war with the north. But they also blame the Chinese."