Xu, Liang and Nordin, Astrid and Steven, Martin (2018) The effectiveness of cultural diplomacy in state trust building between China and the UK. PhD thesis, Lancaster University.
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Abstract
In this thesis, the most important argument is that cultural diplomacy can maintain, enhance and even create state trust, at the same time, the effectiveness of cultural diplomacy can influence state trust building. This research is an in-depth, empirical study of the linkage between cultural diplomacy and state trust, and this thesis aims to explore whether the effectiveness of cultural diplomacy could influence state trust building or not, particularly in the relationship between China and the UK. More generally, this research has three key themes: first, it establishes the conceptualisation of cultural diplomacy and state trust by discussing the thoughts from different schools and proposing new perspectives rather than simply looking at the arguments from scholars; second, it puts forward five indicators of existing state trust and five factors that influence the effectiveness of cultural diplomacy in state trust building; third, it explicitly explores the situation of state trust building by looking at the development and effectiveness of cultural diplomacy in both China and the UK. With the re-emergence of approaches towards soft power in global politics, there comes a growing interest in the potential power of cultural diplomacy. As it is being regarded as the emerging state with great power, China is trying to seek a “soft” path of facilitating harmonious development to thereafter shoulder the responsibility and reshape its national image. In addition, the United Kingdom was one of the earliest states to carry out programs of cultural diplomacy and has already achieved outstanding progress. Therefore, under the grand background of “Golden Era” (Xi, 2015) between China and the UK, improvements of their relationship could be witnessed from many areas. Also, it is a good opportunity to examine whether the state trust level between them might increase or otherwise by taking cultural diplomacy as the main contributor. Key Words: cultural diplomacy, state trust, China, the United Kingdom