The way China dealt with the case of a visually challenged activist, allowing him to go overseas to study law, was an important step forward in developing a paradigm for such cases. Had Confucius described soft power, he might have said that one should "never seek outcomes for others that one would not seek for yourself". This is a good guide for China and the rest of the world in matters related to human rights - for activists and governments both.

China is dealing with the territorial disputes in North Asia with restraint and muted rhetoric. Its engagement with Japan and other sides over the Diaoyu Islands dispute has adhered to correctness in international behavior - with measured use of closed-door and public diplomacy as well as instruments of territorial demarcation and surveillance (rather than outright military force). China has maintained the rhetoric at a diplomatic pitch with a foot on the brakes - to prevent escalation.

The camps of US President Barack Obama and his Republican rival Mitt Romney have urged China to subscribe to international rules at a time when the World Trade Organization has rejected Beijing's appeal against its decision on US steel tariff. Romney intends to declare China a "currency manipulator" and Obama continues to lodge complaints against Beijing to the WTO, while China lodges complaints with the WTO against other countries infringing WTO rules.

This is an area where China can improve its rectitude - rectitude referring to adherence to WTO rules. Having done so, it should be the first to pull up other countries when they transgress.

While perfecting its financial and trade instruments China can do no better than to advocate a ren-yi (humane and correct) approach to international relations, including economic ties. In such an architecture, rules would be paramount. But rules must in the first place be enacted with the lives and livelihood of the people in mind. China can help build a more stable world, one where corporate greed does not periodically result in a collapse that causes ordinary families to lose their hopes and dreams.

Chinese governing institutions have been trying to eradicate corruption by punishing offenders. Corruption is not merely taking bribes. Being in a government job and not working within the rules or not serving the people is also corruption in the broader sense. Too often, across the world, individuals seek government jobs for prestige and security and don't realize that their duty is to serve the people.

By living and projecting benevolent rectitude, the people and governing structures of China can generate strong soft power. I am reminded of an undergraduate student from Wuhan my traveling companions and I encountered in a mall in Nairobi, Kenya. She had elected to spend her summer vacation working in a slum in the Kenyan capital. Such is the stuff of which soft power is made.

This is not to say that factors like CCTV-America with its Facebook and YouTube windows, Confucius Institutes, China-centric conferences and student exchange programs are not important. Indeed, they are instruments to project China's image. However, the vectorial force will come from ripples of ren-yi emanating from the new leadership in Beijing.

The author is inaugural director of the Soft Power Advocacy and Research Centre at Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia.

(China Daily 11/05/2012 page9)