Yearender: Soft power 2.0 -- the rise of an appealing China

by Xinhua writers Yu Xiaohua, Ren Ke

BEIJING, Jan. 1 (Xinhua) -- 2025 was a year that a new image of China quietly unfolded before vast numbers of people in the world -- not through grand pronouncements, but through mundane online and real-life encounters.

When U.S. users fled a looming TikTok ban online in January, some migrated to Xiaohongshu, a popular social media platform in China. On Xiaohongshu, th