Chinese Soft Power and Health Diplomacy: The Case of the Covid-19 Pandemic

With the 21st century, the Chinese state has reached the level of a country that develops global investment projects in the world. In order for global projects to be successful, it is very important that the project stakeholders are convinced of the project. In international relations, the attraction to the main actor of the project is explained by the concept of soft power. In this context, China's soft power is one of the issues emphasized in the literature. The tools of soft power are quite diverse. Health diplomacy is just one of them. In the study, China's contributions to its own soft power by using health diplomacy were examined. The Covid-19 pandemic has provided opportunities for the Chinese state to demonstrate its health diplomacy, show its responsibility towards other states, and increase its soft power. For this reason, the activities of China, especially during the global epidemic, were examined in this study. As a result of the examination, it was determined that China was the country that helped other states the most during the pandemic period. The contribution of the activities to China's soft power has been tried to understand how other states perceive Chinese health diplomacy. In the study, which investigated the discourses of other countries' politicians on Chinese health diplomacy, it was concluded that Chinese soft power increased during the Covid-19 period.