Soft Power with Chinese Characteristics: Pandemic Diplomacy in Latin America and the Caribbean

Abstract

Empirical analysis of China’s health diplomacy toward Latin America and theCaribbean in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic suggests that even though the regionremains peripheral among China’s foreign priorities its health diplomacy functions as adiffusion tool for increasing its soft power in the region, particularly against the background of the evolving China–United States rivalry. The source and development ofChinese soft power in the Global South should be understood as the diffusion effect of thecombination and interdependence of its material hard power and its ideational soft power.