Is China losing its soft power in the Ukraine war? Evidence from the Indo-Pacific

Abstract This paper examines the implications of the war in Ukraine for China’s soft power in the Indo-Pacific. While China is recognised as one of the world’s top soft powers, its stance on Russia’s aggression against Ukraine presents challenges to this status. This paper argues that China’s deployment of soft power instruments in relation to the war in Ukraine risks blurring the lines between soft, sharp, and even hard power in the eyes of foreign audiences in the region. It contends that the reception of China’s behaviour can include not only shifts in how it is perceived by the selected states and the public in the Indo-Pacific, but also an increase in parallels drawn between Ukraine and Taiwan, and heightened concerns over the strengthening of the China–Russia axis. Using a diverse case design covering India, Singapore, and Vietnam, the paper identifies three pathways in the war–soft power nexus—legitimation, force multiplication via relational ties, and contestation—and links them to outcomes. Legitimation operates where China’s “neutrality” aligns with non-alignment preferences and, coupled with relational ties—dense interdependence and people-to-people bonds—sustains soft-power resilience (Singapore). Contestation dominates where China is viewed through a hard power lens—border disputes and maritime coercion—so Ukraine-related messaging is received as sharp or hard power, producing erosion (India). Where these logics collide—cooperation alongside sovereignty frictions—force multiplication effects are capped by contestation, yielding ambivalent or capped outcomes (Vietnam). The contribution is a pathways framework for the war–soft power nexus, enabling comparative assessment beyond these cases.