China's public, or soft-power, diplomacy has traditionally consisted of "people's diplomacy," meaning the cultivation of people friendly to China within other countries. Under this method, China would nurture people sympathetic to its ideas within a country and use these figures to exert influence on the country's upper echelons or political leadership.
This modus operandi, however, belongs to the realm of socialist revolutionary diplomacy; while its legacy is still evident in some aspects of Chinese diplomacy, it is no longer the central pillar of China's soft-power diplomacy. Indeed, an analysis of recent developments suggests that China's soft-power diplomacy has at least four strands:
The first is "quiet diplomacy" designed to convey the message that China, as a major power, does not pose a threat to surrounding countries. In the late 1970s, for example, when Deng Xiaoping steered China down the road to modernization, there was growing anxiety around the world about what kind of country China might become.