China has spent billions of dollars to project soft power in Asia but it has struggled to win the hearts and minds of ordinary citizens in parts of the region, a study said Tuesday.
President Xi Jinping doubled China's foreign affairs budget in six years from 30 billion to 60 billion yuan ($8.5 billion) to bolster its global diplomacy, according to the AidData research lab at the College of William & Mary in Virginia.
"Public diplomacy is a critical ingredient in Beijing's toolkit to neutralise potential threats, overcome internal disadvantages, and outmanoeuvre regional competitors," said the report, carried out with the Asia Society Policy Institute and the China Power Project of the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
The "toolkit to influence South and Central Asia" includes huge infrastructure investments, state-backed media operations, twin cities, military diplomacy and Confucius Institutes, which teach students about Chinese language and culture.
The report found that 95 percent of China's financial diplomacy goes to infrastructure and only five percent goes to other areas such as humanitarian assistance or debt relief.
Two nations captured half of Beijing's investment in the region: Pakistan and Kazakhstan, both key countries in Xi's trillion-dollar Belt and Road Initiative, a global infrastructure programme.
Beijing has also ramped up cultural events, scholarships and student exchanges, and almost every country in South and Central
The report said Beijing aimed to both expand China's broadcasting operations and cultivate relationships with journalists, promote pro-China coverage and "suppress negative criticism."