Evaluation And Comparative Studies Of Urban Soft Power

Cities are the products of that productive forces develop to a certain degree,the social organisms of intensifications of production factors and diversification of industry,and regional developmental centers of economy,politics,science and technology,culture and education.With the homogenization of China's urban construction and the full free flow of recourse elements,competition among cities becomes increasingly fierce.Ultimate competition among cities is competition of resources,especially scarce resources,which includes both hard power recourses and soft power recourses.In this thesis,relevant research of urban soft power was carried out,aiming to quantify the urban soft power,namely by constructing an evaluation index system to study and compare the status of soft power of different cities,analyze the causes of differences,and propose appropriate policy recommendations.The practical significance of this paper is embodied in the importance and value of soft power to cities:First of all,the soft power is the inevitable way to enhance the city's competitiveness.Secondly,there is synergy between urban soft power and urban hard power.Finally,construction of soft power is a necessary requirement of building a people-oriented harmonious society.The main research contents and sequences are as follows:Firstly,the research objects were identified as resources of urban soft power and effects of urban soft power,and two evaluation index systems were set up respectively to those two levels.Secondly,15 sub-provincial cities were studied and compared on their urban soft power.Thirdly,to contrast and analyze the specific performance of resources and effects of urban soft power of Dalian and Qingdao,and to analyze the reasons for the gap.Lastly,numbers of policy recommendations were proposed on the basis of above research.The main research methods used in the thesis are Gray Relative Analysis(GRA),and Empirical Analysis.The GRA was used to study the ranking of resources and effects of urban soft power,and the rank order of the relationship between resources of urban soft power and effects of urban soft power.By selecting the evaluation index and using the Analytic Hierarchy Process to determine the weights of the indicators at different levels,and collecting the data of each object and substituting it into the index system,we can get the ranking of resources and effect s of urban soft power and correlation degree of the research object,which belongs to the category of empirical analysis.A portion of conclusions of the research by this thesis are summarized as follows:the leading indicator of resources of urban soft power is urban public services,and the one of effects of urban soft power is urban outward attraction.Resources and effects of urban soft power are two important parts of urban soft power,both of which are closely related,reciprocal causation,and constitute the consolidated organism of urban soft power system.Innovation of the thesis lies in that the urban soft power were divided into two subsystems of resources and effects,then studied them separately and integrally.Besides,the Grey System Theory was introduced into the research of the thesis,which was an innovation on the methodological sense.Limitations of the thesis lies in that the evaluation index systems failed to cover all the relevant factors,and the index weights were determined by AHP,which produced considerable subjectivity.