From chic styles to cuisine, from cinema to comics, Taiwan is trying to project its soft power across the globe in an effort to step out of China's shadow.
The island of 23 million people is forced to keep its endeavour at a modest level, but it is crucial for its long-term prospects of being seen as an entity in its own right, analysts said.
"Soft power is Taiwan's weapon of the weak given its limited military, economic and political resources," said Lu Yeh-chung, a political scientist at Taipei's National Chengchi University.
"It's very important for Taiwan to employ soft power as a tool to attract support from other countries."
That's lovely and all that, but international acceptance and a dollar will get you a cup of coffee. If China attacks Taiwan, a successful soft power campaign that attracts support from other countries will get Taiwan a bunch of "Free Taiwan" bumper stickers and not much else. How's that "Free Tibet" stuff working out?
But soft power is a good idea. But for Taiwan, aiming it at China is the best way to keep that Peking shadow from engulfing Taiwan for good. It could be used to convince Chinese people that Taiwanese people really don't want reunification in spite of evil rulers in Taipei who stop this, and perhaps in the long run limit the ability of China's rulers to use this issue as a pillar of regime legitimacy. If most Chinese don't want that outcome, China's communist rulers won't see provoking a war as a way of boosting their own popularity.
Alternatively, soft power might even inspire an overthrow of the Peking regime to one that doesn't feel the need to conquer Taiwan as a source of legitimacy.
Given the disparity in size and economic power, Taiwanese military power alone can't be enough to stop a determined Chinese invasion, over time. Eventually Taiwan loses an arms race as China builds power projection capabilities. All Taiwan can really do is be strong enough to raise the cost high enough to deter China and to buy time for America to intervene (and thus leverage more deterrence against China).
And military power buys time for soft power to save Taiwan by making China's rulers or people uninterested in conquering Taiwan.
