WASHINGTON - The Obama administration should step up its public diplomacy because the United States lags behind China in building up its national soft power, according to a Senate report released on Tuesday.

The report, which was requested by Sen Richard Lugar of Indiana, the top Republican on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, found that with its growing economic power, Beijing is pouring more resources than Washington into promoting people-to-people exchanges around the world and paying more attention to enhancing mutual understanding between the two nations.

Since the two countries are entwined in a "complex bilateral relationship", the US needs greater focus on China to enhance its national and economic security and improve its ability to compete with China in overseas markets, Lugar said in a statement.

US Senator Richard Lugar [Photo/Agencies]

"One way to address these issues is through our public diplomacy with China," he said. "Yet in the same way that our trade with China is out of balance, it is clear to even the casual observer that when it comes to interacting directly with the other nation's public we are in another lopsided contest."

The report suggests that the US should send more students to China, establish more American Centers and bid to host the 2020 World Expo.

In addition to the 2008 Beijing Olympics and 2010 Shanghai World Expo, which successfully polished its image, China has already been making great progress in exporting its culture, it said.

China has set up more than 70 Confucius Institutes throughout the US to teach Chinese language and culture, while the US has only five such utilities in China that offer open libraries and information centers.

China has surpassed India to become the leading source of foreign students to the US. Last year, some 130,000 Chinese students enrolled in US colleges and universities, roughly 10 times the number of American students going to China.

"Increasing the number of Americans studying in China is in our nation's vital interest if we are to have the needed commercial, academic and policy experts to address the challenges a rising China will pose to our nation," the report said.

"As a public, our knowledge of China is limited and concentrated among a few diplomats and academics. Not enough students are learning Chinese in our schools."

The report applauds the Obama administration's "100,000 Strong" project, which will increase Americans studying in China to 25,000 a year over four years through private sector support.

But the project remains "woefully under-resourced".

"US public diplomacy regarding China surely needs to be improved if a significant number of Chinese people, intellectuals, and political leaders share the view, or the misperception, that US intends to contain China," Cheng Li, director of research, John L. Thornton China Center at the Brookings Institution, told China Daily.

Thanks to the reform and opening-up that began in 1978, China has achieved remarkable economic development and social transformation in the past three decades, he said.

"America should now pursue its own 'open door policy' and should be more outward-looking."

He said the internationalization of education is "inevitable" in today's world and more and more Americans have now come to realize educational exchanges with China should not be a "one-way street".

During President Hu Jintao's state visit to the US in January, both sides said they will continue to support deeper and broader people-to-people ties, especially through the launch of a China-US Governors Forum and the 100,000 Strong Initiative.

China Daily