Popularity contest: China today is better liked around the world than the U.S. Talk about your fixable problems.

• Author: Frank, T.A.
• Position: Book review

Charm Offensive: How China's Soft Power Is Transforming the World by Joshua Kurlantzick Yale University Press, 320 pp.

A decade ago, many of us would have viewed the terms "charm offensive" and "People's Republic of China" as an odd pairing, a bit like "marriage counseling" and "Henry the Eighth," or "sex appeal" and "Mercury Sable." But times change. China, formerly uncouth in the world of diplomacy and public relations, has now turned suave. In fact, says writer Joshua Kurlantzick in his new book, Charm Offensive: How China's Soft Power Is Transforming the World, China is winning friends and influencing people around the world almost as fast as the United States is doing the opposite. This is a significant change, and Kurlantzick may be the first journalist to draw proper attention to it.

I should disclose here that I know Joshua Kurlantzick. He is a frequent contributor to the Washington Monthly, and he was the foreign editor at the New Republic when I was a reporter-researcher there. So you'll just have to trust my objectivity when I say he's written a good book. Charm Offensive is intelligent, important, and more than a little disquieting.

What China has basically learned--and very well, too--is to deploy what Harvard professor Joseph Nye famously dubbed "soft power," which might be defined as the ability to get your way with other nations by making them like you rather than making them fear you. Whether giving the star treatment to even the smallest of nations, or funding low-cost but high-profile projects such as the construction of a parliament building in Cambodia, or simply making sure that its ambassadors and diplomats have a thorough understanding of the languages and cultures of the nations to which they're posted, China has proven tremendously adept at winning goodwill.

The results have been striking. Across the globe, countries that used to be close friends of Washington have started shifting their affections to Beijing. For example, a 2005 Pew Global Attitudes survey found that more people in Britain have a favorable opinion of China than of the United States (65 percent versus 55 percent). Pew found similar numbers among other U.S. allies, such as France, Germany, Spain, and Holland. In Asia, close friends have also slipped away. In Thailand, once a pro-American stronghold, more than 70 percent of Thais now consider China to be the country's closest friend.

Certainly, before we start getting all depressed, we should admit...