Abstract: The People’s Republic of China’s contemporary power strategy extends beyond military modernisation. It integrates overt strategic signalling, digitally amplified emotional storytelling, and Confucian moral framing into a unified hybrid model of influence. Through spectacles such as the 2025 Victory Day Parade, curated soldier narratives, and globally celebrated athletic achievements, Beijing projects deterrence while cultivating legitimacy. Understanding this fusion is essential for policymakers navigating twenty-first–century competition.

Problem statement: Can traditional military deterrence frameworks adequately respond to a People’s Republic of China that fuses missiles, media, and moral narratives into a single hybrid strategy of influence?

So what?: If policymakers focus only on missiles, fleets, and force posture, they risk missing the deeper contest underway. The People’s Republic of China’s strength lies in its ability to stage power as both capability and virtue. By 2049, success in global competition will depend as much on narrative legitimacy as on military capacity. Democracies must therefore compete in the realm of values, digital resilience, and inclusive partnerships, or risk conceding the psychological terrain that increasingly shapes geopolitical outcomes.

Parade as Power Narrative

On September 3, 2025, Beijing’s Victory Day Parade unfolded with cinematic precision under a cloudless sky.[1] More than 12,000 PLA troops marched in synchrony across Tiananmen Square as J-20 and J-35A fighters roared overhead, hypersonic missiles rolled forward, and drones executed coordinated displays. Scenes of soldiers embracing families—sunburned tan lines and tearful reunions—circulated rapidly on Douyin, TikTok, and Instagram, amplified by diaspora networks beyond the Great Firewall. The spectacle combined deterrence with performance, fusing military capability with emotion and narrative. Within hours, it became a story of sacrifice, discipline, and national pride.[2]

Amid rising conflict risks and more overt strategic signalling, the People’s Republic of China (PRC) has shifted from ambiguity to deliberate messaging. The parade served dual purposes. Domestically, curated imagery humanised the PLA, presenting soldiers as devoted individuals rather than an abstract force. Internationally, it showcased multidomain modernisation across conventional, cyber, space, and AI domains while reaffirming Party control. Framed as civilisational achievement, these displays signal escalation dominance and reinforce perceptions of China’s rise amid stretched U.S. commitments.[3], [4]

Beijing pairs strategic demonstrations with tightly curated narratives—soldiers’ homecomings, viral clips of parade-cap tan lines, emotional reunions, and athletes’ triumphs—that inspire pride while concealing operational details. Many countries humanise military ceremonies through media stories about service members, as seen in U.S. or French national events. The PRC’s approach differs in its deliberate orchestration: state-amplified digital content integrates emotional appeals into a centrally managed hybrid strategy rather than the more decentralised storytelling typical of democratic systems.

Calibrated Exposure Index (CEI)

The Calibrated Exposure Index (CEI) captures how events balance deterrence, empathy, and narrative control to maximise impact while limiting exposure risk. For policymakers, the lesson is clear. Modern influence extends beyond hardware. Missiles command attention, but stories and symbols shape legitimacy. The 2025 parade shows how Beijing integrates force and narrative to deter rivals, mobilise domestic support, and project an image of disciplined and inevitable rise.

Applying the Calibrated Exposure Index across domains reveals a consistent logic: Beijing maximises emotional resonance and narrative control while keeping hard-power exposure largely symbolic. The parade scores high on deterrence (with higher exposure risk), whereas the humanised army and sports diplomacy emphasise empathy at lower immediate risk but with deferred vulnerabilities.

From Dynastic Spectacle to Digital Rejuvenation

The PRC’s use of spectacle as political communication long predates the Chinese Communist Party. Imperial processions during the Qing dynasties conveyed order, hierarchy, and moral authority through ritualised movement and choreographed symbolism. Power was made visible, legible, and emotionally resonant.[5]

The twentieth century repurposed rather than broke this tradition. Mao Zedong’s 1949 founding parade transformed revolutionary victory into visual permanence through disciplined display.[6] Deng Xiaoping’s 1984 parade framed reform and opening as reinforced strength, signalling continuity of Party authority. Each event used spectacle to narrate political renewal.[7] This continuity is anchored in trauma. The “Century of Humiliation” (1839–1949) remains a central narrative, framing military and cultural displays as promises of redemption: visibility equals security, and strength prevents future subjugation.[8]

Humanised narratives have long accompanied these displays. During the Korean War (1950–53), PLA soldiers were elevated as national heroes in propaganda.[9] The 1964 nuclear test was juxtaposed with stories of ordinary soldiers safeguarding the nation.[10] Similarly, the PRC’s 1984 Olympic return, marked by Xu Haifeng’s gold medal, symbolised disciplined re-entry into the international system, while the 2008 Beijing Olympics projected unity and modernity amid external criticism. Athletes became moral ambassadors of sacrifice, humility, and collective purpose.[11] These precedents matter because they establish a recurring Chinese pattern: moments of strength are never presented naked, but always accompanied by moral exemplars who humanise power.

In the Hybrid Power Trajectory (HPT) framework, the 2008 Beijing Olympics mark the transition into the “Global Spectacle Phase” (2008–2012), when soft power intensity reached its pre-Xi zenith (SP ≈ 8) and the PRC demonstrated that athletic prestige and civilizational confidence could function as strategic instruments operating in parallel with hard-power modernisation. This phase established the template “spectacle as a vehicle for narrative legitimacy” that Xi Jinping would later digitise and systematise. The 2025 Victory Day Parade fused imperial ritual, revolutionary symbolism, and reform-era confidence with algorithmic amplification. Jet formations, drone streams, and state-media fusion of historical and live footage framed the event as “rejuvenation in motion.” Hashtags and short videos turned ritual into participatory nationalism. This marks the full maturation of the HPT’s Hybrid Convergence Phase (2020–2025), in which hard power (HP ≈ 8), soft power (SP ≈ 9), and narrative governance (NG ≈ 9) achieve synergistic intensity. Unlike earlier phases, in which instruments operated more sequentially, the 2025 parade demonstrates their deliberate fusion: deterrence signals, emotional content, and algorithmic amplification reinforce a single Party-directed narrative of inevitable rejuvenation.

In this convergence of spectacle and technology, what changes in Xi Jinping’s era are not the logic of spectacle, but its scale, technological sophistication, and strategic intent. The PRC’s past is being digitised for a connected world. This Information control of releasing curated, low-risk narratives of resilience and virtue while securing sensitive assets mirrors information security principles, ensuring influence without compromising control.

Hard Power Display and Party Control

The 2025 Victory Day Parade served as a deliberate exercise in calibrated and overt strategic signalling in a pre-conflict global environment marked by compressed decision timelines, deteriorating arms-control regimes, and rising conflict probability. Over 12,000 PLA troops marched in perfect synchrony as columns of hypersonic missiles rolled past and J-20s, alongside the newly unveiled J-35A stealth fighters, cut across the sky. Swarms of autonomous drones traced coordinated patterns above Tiananmen, signalling that the PRC’s armed forces now operate across all warfighting domains. This was not a raw display of force, but a carefully managed revelation of multidomain capability.

Technically, the parade confirmed the PLA’s evolution into a multidomain force integrating artificial intelligence, cyber operations, and long-range precision strike with conventional capabilities. Elements of “intelligentised warfare” appeared through symbolic displays of autonomous systems rather than technical disclosure. These included AI-enabled “loyal wingman” drones such as the FH-97 or GJ-11 for manned–unmanned teaming, large underwater vehicles like the AJX-002 for covert swarm operations, quadruped reconnaissance robots, autonomous helicopter drones, crewless ground vehicles, and synchronised aerial swarms. Together, they signalled advances in algorithmic coordination, sensor fusion, and data-driven operations, enabling faster cross-domain decision-making. Strategically, the display reflected Beijing’s shift from ambiguity to deliberate capability signalling to shape adversary calculations, convey deterrence and escalation control, and reinforce perceptions of the PRC’s rise amid stretched U.S. commitments.[12]

Modernisation in Xi Jinping’s PRC remains inseparable from political control. Military advancement is explicitly tied to Party loyalty rather than professional autonomy.[13] The sweeping 2024–2025 Rocket Force purges, officially framed as anti-corruption measures, also reflected deeper concerns about political reliability within the force responsible for the PRC’s most sensitive strategic assets.[14] These purges extended significantly into late 2025, culminating in October with the expulsion of nine senior generals, including former Rocket Force commander Wang Houbin, CMC Vice Chairman He Weidong, and CMC Political Work Department Director Miao Hua; one of the largest military leadership cleanups under Xi’s tenure.[15]

The 2025 parade conveyed layered signals abroad. For Taiwan, missiles and stealth fighters highlighted widening cross-strait asymmetry. Southeast Asian states saw that Chinese power is operational, not aspirational. For Washington and its allies, the choreography of hypersonics, drones, and electronic warfare units signalled Beijing’s intent to shape the logic of twenty-first-century warfare. Paired with tightly curated narratives framing deterrence as defensive rather than aggressive, the event exemplifies the PRC’s hybrid approach. Unlike Nye’s “smart power,” which treats coercion and attraction as instruments to be balanced, the PRC embeds soft elements systematically within hard-power demonstrations to achieve synergistic impact.

Domestically, the spectacle reassured a public shaped by nationalist education.[16] State media amplified images of discipline and precision to affirm that humiliation belongs to the past. Strength, unity, and Party leadership merged into a single narrative of rejuvenation.[17]

Ultimately, the parade functioned less as a test of combat readiness than as a performance of control.[18] In Xi’s PRC, hard power does not merely deter rivals abroad. It performs legitimacy at home, turning military strength into a carefully staged expression of authority and belief. The parade was a theatre of control, blurring the line between deterrence and devotion.[19]

Yet the most striking dimension of today’s hybrid strategy is not only in missiles or machines. It lives in the emotions that accompany them, which are the human faces behind the uniforms. Control alone does not generate legitimacy. For that, power must be felt, not merely feared. If hard power establishes credibility, emotion sustains consent.

The Humanised Army

The PRC’s smart power strategy combines emotion with military capability. In the digital realm, the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) is increasingly portrayed as a community of relatable individuals. Videos of soldiers with sunburned faces, tearful reunions, and family embraces have gone viral on platforms like Douyin, Weibo, TikTok, and Instagram. These clips present the PLA as humanised figures, not just an institution, emphasising their sacrifice and emotional connections rather than raw military power.[20]

The videos help bridge the gap between civilians and a professionalised military, reinforcing the PLA’s identity as the “People’s Army.”[21] This emotional storytelling serves as strategic signalling, shaping perceptions through curated content that maximises psychological impact while minimising operational exposure. These narratives spread well beyond the PRC’s borders, shared by diaspora communities, VPN users, and foreign influencers, and they resonate due to their emotional appeal rather than ideological content.[22]

At home, these stories build pride and reinforce the PLA’s image as a moral guardian rather than a coercive agent.[23] They portray the military as disciplined, self-sacrificing, and protective, softening public views of military expansion and supporting the Party’s benevolent leadership narrative.[24]

This humanisation is deliberate and controlled. By foregrounding empathy-inducing moments with tears, laughter, and homecomings, the Party reframes military power as protective and morally grounded rather than coercive. The strategy aligns with broader information control: low-risk, high-emotional-impact content is released to sustain legitimacy, while operational details, command structures, and internal pressures remain concealed.[25]

The approach carries a favourable risk–impact profile. Humanised PLA narratives are classified as low-risk yet medium-opportunity soft power: they generate domestic nationalism and international sympathy with minimal exposure of sensitive capabilities. Nevertheless, the dimension remains vulnerable to credibility erosion if audiences detect overt staging or manipulation.[26]

Over a longer time horizon, this humanisation strategy introduces secondary risk considerations. Its effectiveness depends on sustained narrative coherence; isolated incidents involving misconduct, casualties, or coercive domestic roles can weaken carefully constructed emotional framing. Digital platforms that amplify such content also enable rapid reinterpretation through remixing, juxtaposition, or external reframing, often outside state control. As emotional storytelling becomes normalised, its marginal influence may decline, requiring greater narrative calibration to maintain impact. Accordingly, while digital humanisation minimises immediate operational exposure, it creates a deferred credibility risk that may constrain strategic communication flexibility during crises or escalations.

Countering this dimension requires sustained efforts to challenge narrative dominance in algorithmic environments, alongside traditional military responses. Viral moments are central to deterrence, not peripheral; they stabilise it by fostering domestic cohesion and shaping external perceptions, thereby reducing the perceived need or acceptability of intervention. Applying the Calibrated Exposure Index to the humanised army reveals a unique balance of risk and impact. It indirectly supports deterrence by projecting a cohesive, motivated, and morally grounded force, enhancing hard-power credibility without exposing operational vulnerabilities. Emotional resonance drives high domestic and diaspora engagement at minimal political cost. However, the trade-off lies in narrative control: the authenticity that makes this content effective relies on the absence of countervailing evidence. A single credible incident of misconduct or staged performance, especially if amplified by adversarial or independent media, can shift the framing from a ‘people’s army’ to a ‘performance of loyalty.’ The CEI for this domain thus reflects a medium-high opportunity with a deferred but significant credibility risk.

Sports Diplomacy and Confucian Soft Power

If the soldier embodies discipline under command and the athlete performs virtue under scrutiny, both serve as continuity assets that sustain national pride even when military assertiveness provokes criticism abroad. Sports diplomacy occupies a central place in the PRC’s hybrid power strategy because it projects strength without coercion. Athletic success communicates order, sacrifice, and excellence in ways that feel accessible rather than threatening.[27]

This approach has historical depth. The PRC’s return to the Olympic Games in 1984 was framed as a disciplined re-entry into the international system, while the 2008 Beijing Olympics projected unity, efficiency, and modernity amid external criticism. Popular analyses view the CCP’s engagement with Confucianism as reflecting a strategic appropriation of tradition to reinforce ideological legitimacy and national identity. Within the smart power model, this reinterpretation serves as a normative layer that links cultural projection, moral framing, and political authority.[28]

This trajectory aligns with the PRC’s broader evolution toward hybrid power, as captured by the Hybrid Power Trajectory Index (HPT), a longitudinal framework that assesses the interplay of Hard Power (HP), Soft Power (SP), and Narrative Governance (NG) from 1949 to 2025. The HPT identifies five phases:

• Revolutionary Assertion (1949–1978): Hard power consolidation and ideological survival (HP ≈ 8, SP ≈ 2, NG ≈ 5);
• Reform & Opening (1978–2008): Economic expansion and the emergence of soft power, marked by early sports diplomacy like the 1984 Olympic return (HP ≈ 6, SP ≈ 5, NG ≈ 6);
• Global Spectacle Phase (2008–2012): Olympic prestige signalling, with the 2008 Beijing Games as a symbol of unity, efficiency, and modernity (HP ≈ 7, SP ≈ 8, NG ≈ 6);
• Consolidation under Xi (2012–2020): Military modernisation and enhanced digital control (HP ≈ 9, SP ≈ 6, NG ≈ 8); and
• Hybrid Convergence (2020–2025): Integrated use of hard, soft, and narrative elements, with sports diplomacy playing a central role in soft power (HP ≈ 8, SP ≈ 9, NG ≈ 9).

The HPT shows the steady growth of soft power, driven by cultural and athletic projection, alongside a reduced reliance on coercive signalling. By the contemporary phase, military displays (e.g., Victory Day parades) and symbolic events (e.g., Olympic victories) converge, reinforcing each other to present a unified, non-threatening image.

Values were assigned using ordinal intensity scaling (0–10) based on the relative prominence of each dimension within a given era, rather than absolute quantitative measurement. Scores reflect comparative centrality in state power performance, derived from structured historical coding of policy priorities, public signalling patterns, and institutional developments. The approximate symbol (≈) indicates interpretive anchoring to visualise trend shifts, not statistical precision.

Contemporary athlete narratives build on this tradition. Figures such as Fan Zhendong and Eileen Gu are presented as moral exemplars. Fan Zhendong’s 2024 Paris gold medal and his successful 2025/26 season with German Bundesliga club 1. FC Saarbrücken (before his announced move to Borussia Düsseldorf for 2026/27) demonstrate enduring global influence through individual excellence and cross-border engagement. Eileen Gu’s dual-identity narrative, reinforced by her 2025 ambassadorships with TCL (Global Brand Ambassador, appointed August 2025) and The Snow League (joined June 2025), captures strength tempered by humility, victory framed as collective achievement.[29]

Under Xi Jinping, the moral framing of athletes draws on revived Confucian principles, presenting athletic excellence as a symbol of social harmony, disciplined governance, and civic virtue. State media consistently depict athletes as embodiments of ren (benevolence), li (ritual propriety), filial devotion, and collective purpose — qualities that differentiate the PRC’s sports diplomacy from Western celebrity models centred on individual stardom.

Success is framed not as a personal triumph but as a collective moral endeavour, in which gestures of humility, gratitude to coaches and parents, and national loyalty align directly with Xi Jinping Thought on Culture (emphasised in 2025). This thought promotes the “creative transformation and innovative development” of fine traditional Chinese culture, integrating Confucian ethics into contemporary narratives to strengthen cultural confidence and moral cohesion.

The revival of Confucian values in contemporary China is not merely rhetorical but institutional. Billioud and Thoraval argue that the Confucian revival reflects a state-supported moral project aimed at reinforcing social cohesion and political legitimacy, embedding traditional ethics within education, governance, and public discourse. This institutionalisation provides a normative foundation for sports diplomacy, in which athletes are portrayed as embodying discipline, humility, and collective virtue.[30]

Even moments of failure or setback are reframed as expressions of perseverance and moral character. This institutionalisation, supported by Xi Jinping Thought on Culture, operationalises Confucian motifs systematically rather than as isolated slogans, reinforcing both domestic legitimacy and international appeal.

State media celebrate these athletes as embodiments of ren (benevolence), li (ritual propriety), and filial devotion, Confucian values reinterpreted for a socialist era. Their stories evoke family bonds, perseverance, and national gratitude; even failure becomes an expression of virtue. This moral framing distinguishes the PRC’s sports diplomacy from Western celebrity models. Success is presented as proof of social harmony and disciplined governance. State-run academies and media networks shape athletes into paragons of obedience and moral strength, with every gesture part of a curated script of national renewal.

Internationally, these performances offer medium-risk, medium-gain opportunities for soft power. Sporting excellence humanises the PRC’s image and counters perceptions of authoritarian rigidity. In the Global South, the emphasis on respect, family, and endurance resonates strongly, positioning the PRC as a model of balanced modernity.[31]

Assessed through the Calibrated Exposure Index, sports diplomacy occupies a distinct position that contrasts meaningfully with the parade and humanised military cases. Deterrence contribution is diffuse: athletic success does not signal military capability directly, but reduces the reputational friction that hard-power demonstrations generate. Emotional resonance is high and operates largely in unguarded informational spaces, where state mediation is less visible and therefore more effective. Exposure risk is low in the short term, as sporting narratives lend themselves to plausible non-political readings. Compared with the parade (high deterrence, higher exposure risk) and the humanised army (high emotional resonance, deferred credibility risk), sports diplomacy offers the most favourable CEI profile with high resonance, low exposure, yet remains structurally dependent on the perceived autonomy of individual athletes — a condition strained by the PRC’s centralised talent system. Domestically, moral athleticism deepens social cohesion, linking citizens’ aspirations to the Party’s ethical civilizational narrative. Just as parades project control through choreography, sports project moral order through grace, and both convert discipline into legitimacy.[32]

In this sense, each medal ceremony embodies the PRC’s hybrid power, with athletes and soldiers playing parallel roles—both symbolising sacrifice, translating state ambition into personal stories, and shifting power from fear to admiration. While other autocracies, such as the German Democratic Republic, Socialist Romania, and Tito’s Yugoslavia, used sports diplomacy to project national pride and legitimacy, the PRC’s approach is distinct. It revives Confucian values—ren, li, and filial devotion—blending them with digital amplification and information control. This fusion, rooted in the PRC’s civilizational revival and the Party’s adaptation of traditional ethics, sets it apart from European socialist regimes, which based legitimacy on proletarian ideology or pan-Slavic unity rather than on an enduring philosophical tradition.

By combining Confucian virtues, socialist ideology, digital virality, and a 2049 vision of rejuvenation, the PRC’s model goes beyond previous propaganda strategies. Unlike the Soviet bloc’s reliance on class struggle or personality cults, the PRC integrates moral, ideological, and symbolic narratives, framing power as a source of admiration rather than fear.

Selective Openness and Authoritarian Curation

The PRC’s hybrid power strategy depends on controlled revelation rather than full disclosure. Moments such as soldiers displaying sunburned tan lines or athletes bowing to parents appear spontaneous, yet each is pre-approved, refined for emotional resonance, and scripted to align with political objectives. This information control generates an impression of authenticity while preserving strict authority and preventing dissent.

Critical elements such as military vulnerabilities, internal dissent, elite politics, operational details, and the full impact of leadership purges are rigorously protected. Meanwhile, low-risk, high-impact narratives, such as soldier homecomings that evoke sacrifice or athletes demonstrating discipline, are deliberately released to enhance legitimacy and influence.[33] Soldier reunion videos highlight personal devotion without exposing training strains, and athlete celebrations emphasise harmony rather than political opinions.[34]

Full transparency risks exposing weaknesses that adversaries could exploit, whereas total secrecy fosters suspicion and allows rivals to dominate the narrative space. Selective openness achieves balance: it mitigates exposure risks, sustains public engagement, and maintains emotional appeal. Platforms such as Weibo employ AI-driven real-time moderation, including automated sentiment analysis and recommendation algorithms, to downrank criticism and promote party-aligned content.[35] Military personnel and athletes adhere to stringent communication guidelines, with press interactions rehearsed and personal posts vetted to ensure orchestration.[36]

This calculated curation exemplifies authoritarian resilience. Traditional propaganda has lost its persuasive force in an era when audiences demand emotional authenticity; Beijing therefore humanises the regime through carefully selected stories of tears, embraces, and family bonds, fostering trust and pride, while censorship removes any discordant elements that threaten the image of unity. Legitimacy arises from selective vulnerability, and stability from disciplined concealment.[37]

Nevertheless, the strategy is not without vulnerabilities. Key narrative risks include:

• Overexposure/oversharing (medium–high probability, high impact): Excessive detail enables intelligence exploitation; mitigated by limiting releases to symbolic displays;
• Loss of credibility/trust erosion (medium probability, high impact): Perceived manipulation collapses public faith; countered by prioritising authentic yet low-risk content;
• Leakage of sensitive assets (low–medium probability, very high impact): Breaches undo years of effort; addressed through strict access controls;
• Contradictory messaging (medium probability, medium–high impact): Divergence between rhetoric and actions undermines coherence; resolved by pre-approving aligned narratives; and
• Narrative vacuum (low probability, medium impact): Excessive secrecy invites speculation; managed with controlled, limited updates.

From a risk-governance perspective, this model externalises reputational control to technical systems rather than political persuasion. Heavy reliance on AI-mediated moderation and algorithmic amplification reduces short-term narrative volatility but creates structural dependence on platform integrity, data quality, and calibration accuracy. Errors in sentiment classification, leakage of suppressed content, or external exposure of moderation practices can undermine the perception of authenticity that the strategy seeks to project. As a result, selective openness functions as an efficient stabiliser in routine conditions but may prove brittle under rapid crises, where narrative velocity outpaces centralised control mechanisms.

Information control thus mitigates these fault lines, allowing the PRC to sustain emotional resonance while concealing the apparatus of control. Soldiers and athletes embody both humanity and obedience, their visibility reinforcing the state’s moral order. This curated openness underpins authoritarian resilience, creating an illusion of accessibility while preserving political closure. In Xi Jinping’s era, the revival of Confucian ethics further integrates technology, loyalty, and virtue into a unified ideological framework, strengthening the regime’s narrative architecture.

Moral Revival and Cultural Integration

At the core of the PRC’s hybrid power strategy is a moral revival that frames national strength as virtue rather than domination. Under Xi Jinping, Confucian principles, especially ren (benevolence), li (ritual propriety), and filial responsibility, have been revived and reinterpreted as key elements of governance and national identity. This revival serves as an ideological tool that integrates military discipline, athletic excellence, and political loyalty into a unified moral order.[38]

The soldier enduring hardship and the athlete acknowledging collective effort embody this moral framework. Their public narratives present power as ethical, restrained, and protective, positioning the PRC’s military modernisation and sporting achievements as signs of civilizational renewal rather than aggression. State media amplify these stories to show that true strength comes from harmony, perseverance, and devotion to the collective good.

Xi Jinping’s Thought on Culture, emphasised in 2025, formalises this integration, linking cultural confidence and moral renewal to national rejuvenation. In this framework, modernisation is a moral mission: the PLA’s technological advancements are framed as a righteous defence of the people, while athletes exemplify civic virtue.[39]

Globally, the narrative counters Western moral relativism and social fragmentation, promoting an alternative model rooted in order, dignity, and mutual respect. This resonates in the Global South, where scepticism toward liberal universalism is common. However, this moral revival is carefully managed. Critics argue it’s a “bureaucratised Confucianism” that prioritises obedience over moral pluralism or individual agency. While it strengthens regime legitimacy and social cohesion domestically, it restricts independent moral discourse.[40]

Within the broader hybrid strategy, moral revival operates through information control. Beijing releases curated, low-risk narratives that enhance ethical legitimacy while safeguarding sensitive political and military information. This approach allows the PRC to project both capability and virtue without exposing internal contradictions.

By embedding Confucian virtue into its narratives of strength, the PRC turns military displays and athletic triumphs into tools of moral persuasion. The fusion of cultural pride, ethical authority, and political ambition reinforces the Party’s claim to lead a secure and morally grounded great-power resurgence.

Strategic and Geopolitical Implications

The PRC’s hybrid power strategy blends hard military capabilities with soft instruments to shape deterrence and perception. Missiles and multidomain forces provide leverage, while narratives of loyal soldiers and successful athletes foster legitimacy and empathy, especially in the Indo-Pacific and Global South. Unlike Joseph Nye’s “smart power,” which balances coercion and attraction within liberal frameworks, the PRC’s approach integrates emotional storytelling, Confucian moral framing, cultural projection, algorithmic amplification, and the three warfares with hard-power displays. This creates a unified, Party-directed system of ideological coherence, legitimacy, and narrative control.

Strategically, the PRC employs risk-managed signalling, selectively disclosing capabilities through parades, hypersonic displays, and cyber demonstrations, while safeguarding operational details. Digital platforms amplify low-risk, high-resonance content, including viral soldier reunions and athletic triumphs, which appeal to regions wary of Western individualism and fragmentation.[41]

This approach relies on continuous calibration of messaging to audience response. Engagement data and platform feedback are used to refine tone and timing, helping contain narrative risk and avoid unintended escalation. At the same time, this dependence on measured reception introduces exposure if signals are misread or conditions shift faster than narrative adjustment cycles. However, internal developments expose vulnerabilities. The 2024–2025 purges, culminating in the October 2025 expulsion of senior officers, have created leadership vacuums and organisational churn.[42] The U.S. Department of War’s 2025 PRC Military Power Report notes these disruptions likely affect operational readiness, particularly in the Rocket Force, though potential long-term improvements are possible. Such instability risks undermining credibility if seen as a sign of systemic weakness, amplifying concerns over contradictory messaging or overexposure.[43]

For other powers, the implications are clear: countering the PRC requires more than military measures. It demands narrative resilience, robust digital literacy to detect manipulation, and cultural diplomacy focused on inclusive, values-based engagement in the Global South. Alliances must balance deterrence with proactive storytelling, emphasising transparency and openness as strengths.

The PRC’s strategy redefines 21st-century competition. Deterrence now operates through both moral persuasion and coercion, with curated narratives becoming as decisive as military hardware. The future of power will unfold across both physical and informational domains, where the ability to shape global perception is central to strategic success.

Competing for Hearts and Minds

The analysis suggests that the People’s Republic of China’s contemporary approach to power extends beyond conventional military modernisation to encompass a more integrated system of strategic signalling, narrative construction, and moral framing. The 2025 Victory Day Parade illustrates how military capability can be presented alongside curated emotional and cultural narratives, shaping both domestic legitimacy and external perception.

This fusion points to a broader evolution in the nature of strategic competition. Power is not only exercised through material capabilities, but also through the ability to influence how those capabilities are interpreted. By embedding military displays within narratives of discipline, virtue, and historical continuity, Beijing appears to be advancing a model in which deterrence and legitimacy are mutually reinforcing.

At the same time, such an approach is not without constraints. Its effectiveness depends on maintaining coherence across messaging, earning credibility with diverse audiences, and controlling increasingly complex information environments. These conditions may prove more difficult to sustain in periods of crisis, where competing narratives, rapid information flows, and external scrutiny can expose inconsistencies or limit strategic flexibility.

For policymakers, the implications are twofold. First, responses to the PRC’s rise cannot rely exclusively on traditional measures of military capability, but must also account for the informational and normative dimensions of competition. Second, effective engagement will require not only countering specific narratives but also offering credible, consistent alternatives that resonate across diverse regional and cultural contexts.

In this sense, the evolving contest is not solely about the distribution of power, but about the frameworks through which power is understood and legitimised in the international system.

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[2] “Understanding China’s Victory Day Military Parade: Politics, Strength, Narrative,” Australian Institute of International Affairs, September 9, 2025, https://www.internationalaffairs.org.au/australianoutlook/understanding-chinas-victory-day-military-parade-politics-strength-narrative/.

[3] “China’s Military Parade 2025: Enhanced Capabilities, Strategic Intent,” Observer Research Foundation, September 23, 2025, https://www.orfonline.org/research/china-s-military-parade-signals-enhanced-capabilities-and-strategic-intent.

[4] “Global China 2049 Initiative,” Overseas Development Institute, n.d., https://odi.org/en/about/our-work/global-china-2049-initiative.

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[6] “Mao’s Parades: State Spectacles in China in the 1950s,” The China Quarterly, July 19, 2007, https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/china-quarterly/article/abs/maos-parades-state-spectacles-in-china-in-the-1950s/25EB7752BE7D9AD20832EC1BC0138C26.

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[9] “China Revives Korean War Narrative for Political Unity,” Chosun Ilbo, October 9, 2025, https://www.chosun.com/english/travel-food-en/2025/10/09/EDPVVGZ6TBFHFFW4IP2K34YPN4.

[10] “China Builds the Bomb,” Stanford University Press, August 1988, https://www.sup.org/books/politics/china-builds-bomb.

[11] “Olympic Dreams: China and Sports, 1895–2008,” JSTOR, n.d., https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt13x0kbz.

[12] “Cyberspace Force Equipment at the 2025 Military Parade,” Jamestown Foundation, October 1, 2025, https://jamestown.org/program/cyberspace-force-equipment-at-the-2025-military-parade/.

[13] “The Transformation of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army into a ‘World-Class Military,’” Stiftung Wissenschaft und Politik, September 12, 2025, https://www.swp-berlin.org/publikation/the-transformation-of-the-chinese-peoples-liberation-army-into-a-world-class-military.

[14] “Chinese Communist Party Expels Top Generals in Sweeping Military Crackdown,” BBC, October 17, 2025, https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cwy7528ekzro.

[15] “China Expels He Weidong, Miao Hua and 7 Other Generals from Party and Military,” South China Morning Post, October 17, 2025, https://www.scmp.com/news/china/military/article/3329429/chinas-no-2-general-he-weidong-expelled-communist-party.

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