“Power over opinion is therefore not less essential for political purposes than military and economic power,” the prominent British political scientist and historian E.H. Carr wrote of the period of rising conflict during the two world wars. Yet a century or so later, as China-U.S. competition intensifies in Southeast Asia, there continues to be relatively less attention paid to the narrative component of that competition when it comes to engaging with publics compared to the military and economic realms. This is despite the reality that the narrative space is arguably more contested…
