**5. Conclusion**

Compared with the traditional inter-governmental diplomacy, the subjects and objects of public diplomacy are more extensive, the specific diplomatic forms more diverse, and the implementation period of some forms of public diplomacy is longer. These are the characteristics of public diplomacy that determine our need to strengthen the evaluation of its implementation effect in the process of carrying it out, thus to timely adjust the direction and implementation of public diplomacy strategies, reduce resource waste, and improve diplomatic efficiency. Effective evaluation of the effect of public diplomacy requires a determination of the evaluation criteria. The most common practice today is to associate the effects of public diplomacy with soft power, whereby the evaluation of a country's public diplomacy is based on whether a country's soft power towards other countries has improved. This chapter challenges that view and holds that the basic function of public diplomacy is to transform the assets of a country into soft power resources that attract the target country, rather than turning soft power resources into soft power, as mentioned by Joseph Nye. In other words, the success of a public diplomacy effort is judged by whether or not it improves or enhances the public of the target country's evaluation of the implementing country.

When evaluating the effectiveness of a country's public diplomacy, we should also avoid making excessive demands of it. For instance, public diplomacy is probably of little use in the 'high politics' of territorial security. Even in fields where public diplomacy can play a role, the power competition between countries, differences in political systems, quality of political relations, and other factors will lower the target country's evaluation of the implementing country. In carrying out empirical research, we should carefully control for these interfering variables and avoid miscalculating the actual effect of public diplomacy. Therefore, researchers should focus on improving their research design in order to make empirical evaluation results more reliable. Rigorous empirical research is the most powerful guarantee of consistent pinpointing and rectifying of problems arising in public diplomacy practice.
