Study: Which countries have the biggest soft power influence?

The US has come up on top in a global soft power index study in 2022 thanks to its response to COVID-19, with other metrics such as reputation, governance, and people and values improving significantly as well. In the same study, China has achieved its best-ever performance, overtaking Japan as the highest-ranked nation in Asia and moving up from eighth to fourth in the overall ranking.

China ranks fourth for familiarity, second for influence, and its reputation score climbs back to the 2020 level after last year’s dip. China also performs particularly well in the business and trade pillar as it is ranked first in this category, leading above the US, Germany, and Japan. China’s economy grew by 8.1% in 2021 and its exports increased by 30% to reach record levels as demand for Chinese goods boomed. Additionally, China's tackles of pandemic by implementing a zero-COVID policy with the continuation of lockdowns, isolation policies, mass testing and vaccination programmes saw its COVID-19 Response score improves by +1.7 as a result, raising it from 30th to 19th place.

According to Brand Finance's Global Soft Power Index 2022, the US bounces back to the top place of the index after turning a corner on the COVID-19 pandemic thanks to its vaccination effort. Its score jumps from 55.9 out of 100 in 2021 to 70.7 in 2022, the highest score ever in the Index. Alongside continued top performance on several metrics, like familiarity and influence, the key behind the US’s comeback to the top is the tremendous change in its COVID-19 response score from the bottom of the table globally last year to 26th place in 2022. Other metrics improve a lot too, such as reputation (6th, up from 21st), governance (8th, up from 20th), and people and values (16th, up from 25th).

However, the US’s scores for the safe and secure (41st) statement within "governance" and friendly (62nd) in "people and values" remain drastically low. Brand Finance said violent gun crime and police brutality appear to be affecting perceptions internationally and are likely to remain an ongoing challenge to the US’s nation brand until these issues are addressed at the root.

In Europe, the UK rebounds strongly from the tumultuous environment that Brexit and COVID-19 took place in recent years. The country's score jumps from 57.9 in 2021 to 64.9 in 2022, moving up one place to the second and overtaking Germany. The UK sees improvements in the familiarity and COVID-19 response pillars, thanks to the country’s contribution to the development of the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine and the effective immunisation programme rolled out by the government. Germany's score rises to 64.6 in 2022, but the stronger performance of the US and UK causes it to fall from the top spot to third place. Brand Finance said Germany had long acted as a beacon of strength and stability with a grand coalition government under Angela Merkel’s leadership. Now, leading a new red-green-yellow coalition, chancellor Olaf Scholz has a big task ahead of him to manage the expectations and maintain the standards that have been set.

"The US reclaims the top spot, followed by the UK, Germany, and China. All four nations have been instrumental in lifting the world out of the health crisis through the development of vaccines. Across the ranking, perceptions of nation brands are largely recovering to their pre-pandemic levels," said David Haigh, chairman and CEO of Brand Finance.

The index also covers Russia and Ukraine. Compared to the perceptions captured in the research conducted for the index before the conflict, Russia’s reputation drops by 19% globally as a result of its invasion of Ukraine. Perceptions of Ukraine improves as a result of Russia’s invasion, with familiarity increasing by an extraordinary 44%, influence by 24%, and reputation by 12%.

In Southeast Asia, Singapore is the best performing industry with a score of 48.5, up from 47.9 in 2021. In the category of COVID-19 Response, the country is ranked 10th, the best performance among all categories followed by education and science (13th), business and trade (13th), governance (16th).

Malaysia is ranked 39th with a score of 38.5, up from 36.9 in 2021. The category of business and trade is ranked 33rd, the highest among all metrics, and followed education and science (34th), COVID-19 response (35th) and reputation (35th). Indonesia has a score of 34.8 and is ranked 47. The best performing categories are business and trade (41th), influence (46th) and familiarity (46th).

"Soft power is very fluid. It is an always shifting and mutating space. All stakeholders of soft power need to be involved, remain open-minded, adaptive, critically aligned with each other and need to measure what they are doing from an external and comparative perspective," said Samir Dixit, managing director of Brand Finance Asia Pacific.