Space Power Soft Power

Water is fluid, soft, and yielding. But water will wear away rock, which is rigid and cannot yield. As a rule, whatever is fluid, soft, and yielding will overcome whatever is rigid and hard. This is another paradox: what is soft is strong.

Lao Tzu

Chinese philosopher (604 BC-531 BC)

The term soft power has become a part of popular security discourse since 1990, when it was first used by Prof. Joseph Nye in his book titled Bound to Lead: The Changing Nature of American Power [1]. Prof. Nye has developed this concept further in some of this subsequent works.

This chapter is in three parts. The first part outlines the theory, the concept, the notion as well as the critic of soft power in broad terms. The second part analyses the geopolitics of space technologies as a source of soft power. The third part explores the meaning of soft power in context of China’s space programme.