Global Soft Power Summit 2025 - Global Soft Power Index Key Findings by David Haigh (youtube.com)
China has overtaken UK for second spot. Worldwide policies like BaR, Confucious Centers, lending money. Soft power for policy objectives. Now there are more than 70 globally accepted Chinese brands in the top 500 brands, compared with 10 twenty years ago. Britain dropped from 40 to 20. US, note, has about 200, and a lot of those came to soft power during the 30 or 40 year period of US Soft Power after WWII. Favorability. Now there is a turn against US brands, and sometime active rejection, like of Starbucks.
The top countries for them are US, China, UK, Japan, Germany, France, Canada, Switzerland, Italy, UAE.
US had dropped from first to seventh in 2021, and they anticipate something will happen again, but quicker and deeper. They say the Trump admin looks to do this purposefully perhaps.
Israel and Ukraine down a bit, Russia up a bit from where it was last year.
Tourism effects everything, not just tourism itself (immediate economic benefits). Willingness to recommend investment, work there, study there, the products and services of the country. People don't always understand what other countries are all about, and tourism is a way they can understand this.
El Salvador shot into popularity.
They found that the larger players (US, China, UK, Japan, Germany) are taking it more seriously, investing more, and their ratings are increasing, and crowding out the small players, whose ratings are decreasing.
EM have been bolstered by new global powers, China and India, who are investing in these locations, not just US. Access to technology. New groupings.
Alternative payments, alternative currencies.
Diversification, friendshoring. Supply chains on the move. Companies are looking around the world to shift, not just Western either. Are you open to trade? Stability? Electricity supply and political stability are really important, more than low corruption or education. Islands of stability where global players will meet and join, conglomerate. UAE, Singapore, Thailand, KSA.
‘We criticized China for many year, and China didn’t change, and then rather than fighting we just joined the party. So now everyone's doing it. Everyone's doing industrial policies nowadays.'