Soft Power

Soft power is pretty simple. It is when a government or someone with power achieves aims using persuasion and/ or influence. One example of soft power is when China invested almost 1.4 trillion dollars to Africa for infrastructure. Because of this incredibly huge investment, Africa gave China favorable access to most of the natural resources in the Africa states. Although this move might be classified as soft power, it could just as well be smart power. China used its money and influence to gain access to Africa's resources. In turn, China probably gained some sort of alliance with Africa. With Africa having a ton of gold and resources and literally everything, I'd say it's a smart power play  I don't know if the US has done things like this before, but if they did, I think it would be a good investment. I don't know that much about investments and economical solutions/problems but having a place where you could invest money into it and get back resources sounds like a pretty good deal. This is an example of both smart and soft power because China didn't use military force to force Africa into giving it resources, instead they struck a deal and went with it.

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