This multi-year project is funded by Marianne and Marcus Wallenberg Foundation, with PI Prof. Linus Hagström (Swedish Institute of International Affairs and Swedish Defence University). It aims to explore the issue of an East Asian power shift, specifically by analyzing the exercise of "soft power" in China-Japan relations. The main question to be addressed is whether China affects Japan more than vice versa with regard to this kind of power. In particular, the project purports to develop a constructivist understanding of soft power, which combines the actor-focused perspective of earlier soft power analysis, with the structural or discursive power perspective that is inherent in the soft power concept.

The objective of the project is to challenge how East Asian foreign policy is portrayed in media and research, and to point out how particular interests form that portrayal. Dr. Nordin worked full time on this project in 2015-16. The project will run until June 2019.