This senior thesis is an exploration of Chinese soft power and the implications on the future of US-China relations. The first chapter looks into the objectives/goals to attain by using soft power set by the Chinese government followed by the exploration of methods that the Chinese have used to further their goals. The second chapter takes a look at the implicit and explicit successes of soft power in the peripheral regions of China and neighboring countries. The third chapter explores the negative and positive results that have come from China's soft power efforts. And the final chapter covers the fluctuation in American soft power and the effect China's soft power will have on global stability. The paper concludes with policy suggestions for the United States if it wants to protect national interests against China's soft power in the future.

This diploma thesis examines the image of Hong Kong's pro-democracy protests in 2019 in the Czech and Chinese media. The framing of these protests in selected media is compared using the method of quantitative content analysis, with the aim of revealing similarities and differences both between the individual Czech media in the context of the Czech public debate on China and between the Czech and Chinese media. The theoretical part of this thesis presents the concepts of media theory such as framing, agenda setting and social construction of reality and characterizes the specifics of given media systems. Furthermore, the work describes the previous findings of the protest paradigm, which are then employed in analytical part of this study. At the same time, the concept of soft power with Chinese characteristics and its specific manifestations in the efforts of the People's Republic of China to influence the Czech public debate on China is introduced. The methodological part then presents the research goal, research questions and hypotheses, defines the research sample and the research method used, including the characteristics of individual variables. The analytical part of the work presents the results of the research, which are then discussed in the framework of previous findings of the protest...