speaking softly of soft power

so, i can speak. big sigh of relief. there may or may not have been a few moments during which my imagination danced delicately into fantastical thinking and i panicked about never recovering my voice. i am not at full capacity and don't quite yet sound fully myself, but i am getting close. and i am finally starting to feel a bit better as well. this week has been so bizarre. there was all the sound and fury (and justice imploding all over the place) related to work. and all the deep silence (and over-thinking) around me at home. and now it is friday evening, and i cancelled plans after realizing i'm not quite healed. participating in a work program last night wore me out and going to the office for part of the day utterly exhausted me. i am being responsible and resting tonight.*

the work program last night was really wonderful and inspiring. and made me feel fortunate to be here working on rule of law issues all over again. also, i think i really need to stick around at least until the eighteenth national congress (fall, 2012), just to see what happens. well, provided the pollution doesn't wreak further havoc on my vocal cords first. two interesting discussions from last night:

1 - in communist regimes such as present PRC, former USSR, you never really know what any of the political elites think or what they will do until they are actually at the very top and in power. no one predicted khrushchev (from stalin's close advisor / staunch supporter to de-stalinization?) or gorbachev (who was prepared for perestroika?) at all. no one saw it coming. but how could they? they only way to rise in these parties is to hide all your cards until you've already cashed in and are running the whole casino. the speaker was drawing parallels with the chinese leadership.

2 - china wants soft power. so eventually it will have to embrace the non-commercial aspects of rule of law, including respect for civil liberties, due process, a functioning judiciary, and tolerable criminal justice system. i thought this was interesting given my recent thinking about thin v. thick rule of law. and i also just thought it was interesting. i hadn't seen things from that perspective before. (sometimes when you are too close to things it has hard to see them with any perspective at all.) but it makes some sense to me. china wants to be taken seriously on the world stage, it wants to be respected, it wants soft power. and the chinese leadership knows that requires serious reforms related to openness and rights. (russia, ps, has totally given up on this insofar as i can tell. i just read yet another article about journalists and human rights activists been killed and abused and beaten for speaking truth to power. so tragic.)

i am going to consider this soft power angle more, because i believe there is something to it. (especially if whomever takes over in 2012 has a personal belief in or vision for political opening and human rights!) but rather than take up space with my pontificating here, i am going to consider the importance of soft power from a soft lavender bath and then bed.


*also, i have a 9 am cooking class and am determined to be bright-eyed and paying close attention. being ill always makes me fancy myself an amazing chef (it comes with being cooped up and having an overactive imagination).