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soft power

British  

noun

  1. the ability to achieve one's goals without force, esp by diplomacy, persuasion, etc Compare hard power

"Collins English Dictionary — Complete & Unabridged" 2012 Digital Edition © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2012

Example Sentences

Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.

“If defense is Europe’s ‘hard power’ rebuild, EuroStack-style thinking is the ‘soft power’ rebuild: a push toward a European-controlled tech stack across compute, cloud, security, and apps,” says Tuttle.

From MarketWatch

“The party has understood that it cannot design soft power in a meeting room,” said Shaoyu Yuan, an adjunct professor at New York University’s Center for Global Affairs.

From The Wall Street Journal

“Beijing benefits when the U.S. damages its own standing or retreats from global leadership, but China’s own efforts to project state-sponsored soft power have produced mixed results,” said Lizzi Lee, a fellow at the Asia Society Policy Institute.

From The Wall Street Journal

Since becoming the party’s propaganda minister in 2022, Li has championed Xi’s program to invoke Chinese arts, traditions and history to justify Communist rule and boost Beijing’s soft power.

From The Wall Street Journal

The image of America also recovers because its fundamentals and soft power remain strong: people still want to go to its universities, watch its movies and admire its economy, says Mitchell Reiss, a longtime U.S. diplomat who is now at the Royal United Services Institute think tank in London.

From The Wall Street Journal