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In recognition of religion’s growing role in social life, the Chinese government places ample political trust in religions and encourages religious organizations and leaders to be more deeply involved in Beijing’s public diplomacy. Having completed the transition from prudence to activism, China’s religious public diplomacy now takes many forms, from hosting high-profile international religious forums and participation in international religious organizations to engaging in exchanges of visit and multiple religious dialogues. Beijing has secured an institutionalized role for religion in public diplomacy through a string of legislative actions and policy measures, for example, erecting a legal and policy framework, putting in place a robust multiparty operational mechanism, formulating a well-defined list of targets, and granting religious groups greater autonomy and flexibility. Beijing’s religious public diplomacy also faces significant risks and competition, which will affect its effectiveness and outcomes. Going forward, religious public diplomacy should put more emphasis on its spiritual dimension, build more internationalized organizing platforms, expand its engagement targets, and improve risk control and prevention mechanisms. Moreover, Beijing should increase the institutional stability and creativity for its faith diplomacy and encourage the five state-sanctioned religions and folk beliefs to play a larger role, with a view to consolidating national identity and religious identity among the Chinese people.

Existing analyses of China’s soft power coverage by the media largely focus on individual soft power activities, and rarely study media coverage of comprehensive soft power projection as a whole. This study shines new light on soft power narratives through a content analysis of its components, actors, information sources, and themes from 2010 to 2019. This study has provided a deeper and more holistic understanding of China’s soft power narratives in its attempts to address negative perceptions and build a positive image. The major findings reveal that Chinese media focus on achievements, weaknesses, and potentials as themes, and their attention has shifted from culture and domestic information sources to economy and non-Chinese information sources in the two periods: 2010–2016 and 2017–2019. The analysis of this paper indicates a trend toward a more balanced portrayal of China’s soft power initiatives. It also presents China’s growing confidence and self-assurance in soft power coverage. However, given the role of the state-run media outlets as instruments of the state’s public diplomacy strategy, the media coverage might reflect a selective representation of soft power to engage with international audiences more effectively.

By quoting archives, this chapter examines China's program for training Albanian interns during the Cold War as a case of foreign economic and technical assistance and interprets the public diplomatic behavior intended to “establish socialist brotherhood” among Albanian interns based on the political alliance between China and Albania. The historical facts about China's training Albanian interns show that the basic characteristic of public diplomatic behavior under the revolutionary diplomatic route lies in its pursuit of a single ideological commonality as the premise and goal, but such public diplomatic behavior could hardly promote the development of relations between countries in a substantial way on account of its excessive pursuit of ideological interests.