China’s cultural soft power is winning over Italia
A network of initiatives suggests a reciprocal exchange through the gradual development of Sino-Italian cultural spaces, in which the public and private sectors, institutions, museums, foundations and galleries all contribute to forging new relationships
Key points
In recent decades, the West has been swept by increasingly significant waves of Asian cultural influence. Following the global expansion of Japanese culture, driven by various media, the momentum of Chinese culture is proceeding, one might say, ‘at a gallop’.
A strong cultural diplomacy is, in fact, in line with the objective of Chinese foreign policy to create a multipolar global order capable of reducing Western influence. To counter Western hegemony (understood as that of the US, Europe, but also West Asia), the People’s Republic has learnt that states do not live and thrive on hard power alone. It is no coincidence, therefore, that Chinese soft power is now increasingly evident in Europe and in Italia. This is also evidenced by the numerous exhibitions, funded by Chinese public and private bodies, which in recent years have brought Chinese artists to our country, often through collaborations between Italian cultural institutions and organisations from the People’s Republic.
China’s cultural soft power
The concept of soft power, developed from the 1990s onwards by the political scientist and Harvard professor Joseph S. Nye, refers to a country’s ability to exert influence through attraction, rather than through coercive or economic means. According to Nye, a state’s soft power depends primarily on three resources: culture – when it is seen as attractive by other countries; political values – when they are shared and recognised even beyond national borders; and foreign policy – when it is perceived as legitimate and authoritative, including on a moral level.
The People’s Republic is now seeking to utilise all three of these levers as far as possible. In particular, the gradual scaling back of the United States’ role in certain international bodies and programmes has opened up new avenues of influence. The Trump administration’s foreign policy, which is geared towards withdrawing from certain multilateral organisations, such as UNESCO, and characterised by a growing mistrust of parts of the international legal framework, has helped to create a favourable environment for the expansion of China’s presence.
Washington’s withdrawal strengthens Beijing’s position, as it has long been seeking to expand its international influence. Consider, for example, that China is second only to Italia in terms of the number of sites inscribed on UNESCO’s World Heritage List: in 2025, China had 60 sites, compared with Italia’s 61.
Furthermore, one of the distinctive features of soft power is that, unlike hard power, it is not exercised almost exclusively by states. Non-governmental actors also contribute to shaping a country’s international image and appeal: film producers, writers, artists, musicians, comic-book artists and cultural practitioners. And it is precisely the arts sector – which partly fuels so-called cultural diplomacy – that is one of the areas in which China’s growing presence in Italia is most evident today.
