Role of Propaganda in Chinese Scheme of Statecraft to Dispel the Narrative of China’s Threat Perception in South Asia

Abstract

Looking into the history of civilizations, they ceased to exist the moment they stopped being interactive and Chinese civilization is no exception. China has been pursuing a path of peaceful development to regain its lost glory but many countries especially the West has become skeptical of this Chinese claim. Beijing has responded to this narrative of ‘China threat’ by cultivating its soft power and propaganda and diplomacy have been adopted as effective tools of Chinese statecraft. In this backdrop, this study is aimed at analyzing Chinese statecraft in South Asia in general and propaganda statecraft in particular to alleviate the fears stemming from ‘China threat’ thesis. This is a qualitative study that employs content analysis technique to analyze Chinese propaganda statecraft in South Asia. This study concludes that propaganda statecraft has produced phenomenal results in transforming its resources into power in most of the South Asian countries except India.