Dr. Anurag Viswanath (Independent Writer), Prof. Alka Acharya (Jawaharlal Nehru University)

With rise in China's economic muscle and global footprint, China's foreign policy outreach has expanded while its soft power has been declining. Despite being a 'rising' power, there has been a visible global pushback and backlash to both China's Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) as well as its "wolf warrior" diplomacy. China has been called a 'lonely power", a superpower that has not actualised or may not actualise due to the gap between its economic muscle and perceived moral authority; economic power and low soft power.

But today, China has a new policy thrust, a corrective to make China "lovable". The effort is envisaged to rectify, correct and reverse the backlash of China's BRI, 'go-out" policy and low soft-power. How is "Lovable" China manifesting in policy and practice? The genesis of why this has emerged, how China seeks to achieve this and a critique of the evolving policy will be the focus point of the paper.