Before 2004, it was extremely rare to hear the words ‘China’ and ‘soft power’ spoken in the same sentence (Gill and Huang, 2006). In the following five years, the study of Chinese soft power generated enough scholarship to put it on the way to becoming part of any mainstream analysis of the Chinese power. Predominantly China's potential regional power but also influence and attraction in other parts of the world too. In a remarkably short period of time, it was a topic that went from being pretty much non-existent to become a ‘theme of the time’ of sorts.

It is no real coincidence that this rather rapid change of focus coincided with the initial boom in COFDI discussed in the previous chapter. In addition to the general growth of financial flows, the establishment of China's new sovereign wealth fund (the CIC in September 2007) provided a focal point for those already concerned that the Chinese state was now prepared to use its financial resources in strategic ways that could harm the national interests of major Western powers. Not just by buying up strategic assets in the West, but also by trying to buy friendship and support in the developing world. It also provided an example within China of how (mis)perceptions of what the country wanted could result in actions to block Chinese activity (Wu and Seach, 2008: 47). Hence the importance of trying to assuage these potential concerns by ‘cultivating a benign reputation abroad’ (Shirk, 2007: 106).

There were other reasons too though. In 2007, Hu Jintao's report to the 17th Party Congress had included a specific call to increase Chinese soft power as a source of both national cohesion and global competition: