During my recent trip to Hong Kong, I read a very interesting article about the Soft Power List from the South China Morning Post ; we all know about Hard Power which is based on GDP per capita,,military strength and trade balances. Soft Power has in the last 16 years, at least from the turn of the century (2001 being the actual 1st year of the new millenium), made its impact on the world we live and how we view each other's countries.
The various categories in which the Portland Communications derives the ranking (their is no mention of the weightage attributed to each category) are :
a) Government - this I would take it as how well run the country is ; the rule of law and
the adherence to a basic common civil code amongst its citizens. I agree Singapore's law, order, and civil society scores our country very highly in this category.
b) Culture - I would question as to how much weight is given to this attribute, as a small and still young country like Singapore only has 52 years of existence and hence, a very naturally shallow depth of works in the arts. A country like South Korea with its recent emergence and global popularity of KPop and Korean movies would score very highly in this area.However, it is ranked below Singapore in the Global Soft Power List coming in at 21 compared to Singapore's 20.
c) Education : This is very crucial attribute or category. Many Western countries admire the rote learning of the Eastern Asian and South Asian countries but the criticism about too much rote kills creativity and freedom of expression and independent thought, which is crucial for today's leaders. Singapore's scholars have known to excel in achieving top marks from the best Universities, but when entering into the working world, which is most probably the civil service, end up doing very well, but no one would challenge the status quo.
Groupthink while good for incremental change would be detrimental if that organization just plodded along with all its scholars and 'yes men' just pushing the KPIs mindlessly set for them by the upper management. Its a recipe of mediocrity in the long term.
d) Enterprise : I would rename that as Entrenpreneurship Creation would be an even better category name
When a country creates a flood of new wave of business models from mavericks such as Mark Zuckerberg, Sergey Brin, Elon Musk, Jack Ma, Stan Shi and Kobayashi (Softbank) it enhances its image very much in influencing the way people interact, dress, purchase things and invest. This is definitely soft power. Singapore only had one or two top rated entrepreneurs in Sim Wong Hoo (Creative Tech) and Olivia Lam (Hyflux).
Steve Jobs most famously said in the '80s : "forget what people think, I will tell them what they want". He as a mega brand ambassador created "wants" for millions of people such as the Mac, Mac II, IPhone, IPad. Soft Power ? Very much so. US (then) - Yes.
e) Engagement : this I would take it as political and how well connected and engaged each country is to the rest of the world. As a city state, Singapore does punch above its weight class, however, our leaders need to take a recalibration of our 'reach' as our founding fathers have left the scene permanently and the new world order is quite unsettled.
US has pulled out of the Paris Climate Pact, and TPP. So there are new leaders on their up the Soft Power list namely China, Germany and France. It would be good for us to forge warm ties with the new Head Prefects so to speak.
f) Digital : this is the most disruptive attribute of all. Every month, new normals are coming into the field of play on our smartphones to change the way we interact with people, choose friends, communicate, send messages, book flights, spa packages, fashion,movie screenings the list is expanding at a dizzying rate.
Countries which embrace the digital platforms risk losing precious security aspects,personal data and a whole myriad of people's private information on dining, drinking, working, driving, holidaying and playing can be assessed and more.
So its a double edged sword. Choose wisely and tread carefully.
The 6 attributes get reviewed each year ; its a fascinating read. Everyone else watches and follows what the top 30 does each year.
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