Charming, confident, humorous and perseverant, Li Na leaves such a different impression on Western audiences than the stereotypical images of Chinese athletes as rigid, lacking personality, even "gold-winning machines" — as one newspaper commentator said.

Li, whose historic victory at Roland Garros as the first Chinese tennis player to win a Grand Slam, has international manners that allow her to communicate with Western media and people. Her public relations team is headed by her agent, Max Eisenbud, the senior vice president of IMG, a sports agency that has nearly 3,000 employees operating in 30 countries around the globe. Eisenbud and his team have helped to remake Li, who was once notorious as a "bad girl" who rejected talking to the press, into a more mature athlete who knows how to deal with global media in fluent English. Now, she displays her charisma to her fans, who recognize Li as one of them, both at home and abroad.

Of course, Li does not pretend to be sincere because she has always been sincere. The difference is that before she did not know how to express her sincerity and now she does. Additionally, the reform in Chinese tennis that allows players to "fly alone" and choose their own training group as well as agent team has equipped Li with more freedom to change and advance. Li's change can be applied to all of Chinese sports, as well as China's public relations with the West.

For a long time, China has been trying to let the world know the real China, investing large amounts of money into public relations campaigns. But its national image still remains largely negative and has even become worse with the country's rapid growth. According to a Pew poll from several years ago, "Favorable views of China have fallen in Western Europe — particularly in Spain, Germany and France."

One of the reasons China's public relations campaigns have been unsuccessful is because institutions did not introduce the real China in a way that target audiences like and can understand. So even though China is telling the truth, people just do not understand. Because this campaign is directed by the government or state-run media, people perceive it as propaganda and choose to believe the information is exaggerated or untrue.

Li's successful and internationalized way of public relations indicates that China should change its strategy of international communication from self-centered narration to internationalization and localization, which means being closer to target audiences by way of an internationalized operation system. Then again, Li's example of public diplomacy emphasizes non-governmental communication across countries. Maybe that is the way to let the rest world know a real China.

Gong Wen is a visiting scholar at the School of Journalism and Communication at Tsinghua University.

Opinion articles reflect the views of their authors, not necessarily those of China.org.cn.