Zhao Alexandre Huang, membre du projet DIGISOV, publie un chapitre intitulé « China’s public diplomacy: a historical analysis of its institutions and conceptual pathways » dans l’ouvrage collectif dirigé par Sean Aday, Handbook on Public Diplomacy, Edward Elgar Publishing, 2025.
This chapter employs historical–institutional analysis to examine China’s public diplomacy and digitalization since 1949, offering historical and institutional frameworks for studying Beijing’s evolving practices. China’s public diplomacy has gone through three crucial stages. If notions such as “people’s diplomacy” and “united front” of the Mao Zedong era laid the theoretical foundation for China’s foreign policy, then the external propaganda of the Deng Xiaoping era developed a pragmatic rhetoric for public diplomacy reform, emphasizing a low-key and peaceful ascent aimed at economic development and geopolitical gain. Focusing on the theme of the Chinese Dream, public diplomacy in Xi Jinping’s era used digital tools to create the illusion of pluralistic and open interaction; however, the true aim was to use aggressive narrative rhetoric to launch international public opinion struggles and promote a new international order that favored Beijing’s geopolitical interests, marking a return to the propagandist rhetoric of the Mao Zedong era.