An Analysis of Joseph Nye's “Soft Power”Concept Zhang Xiaoming(20) Joseph Nye first developed the concept of “soft power” in the early 1990s. The soft power of a country rests primarily on three resources: its culture, its ideology or political values, and its ability to shape international rules and political agendas. It is a very important theoretical approach to analyzing the power position of a country in the world, by focusing on the nonmaterial aspect of power once neglected by many people. “Soft power” is a creative concept coined by Nye, but it also reflects a continuation of the traditional concept of power. Nyes concept of “soft power” has its own weaknesses, because Nye could not fully elaborate on the interplay of hard power and soft power, and it is difficult to measure the soft power in a quantitative way.