The Rise of GCC’s Soft Power and China’s Humanities Diplomacy

Abstract: Since the establishment of the GCC, its member states have been making an effort to strengthen the GCC’s political integration on the basis of the members’ active practice of promoting security and economic integrations. During this process, there is a trend that the GCC’s soft power is continuously rising, which is embodied in the following points: strengthening the GCC’s religious and political influences; getting discourse power in the Arab-Islamic affairs; gaining political influence through involvements in regional hot issues; transforming into an Arabic-Islamic alliance of monarchies. On this basis, the article analyzes the major causes of the rise of the GCC’s soft power and puts forward some recommendations for China to deal with it.