The legacy of ping-pong diplomacy has given the veteran player enduring enthusiasm for his sport as well as a range of activities aimed at strengthening China-US relations... Braithwaite continues to serve as a board member of the Sino-American Friendship Association, a nonprofit organization that promotes Chinese culture and China-US ties.

China launched its first cultural industry index on Friday to provide an indicator of how the sector is performing... Experts said that OCT index will indicate the development level and trends of China's cultural industry, and reflect the operational and profitability situations of listed culture-related firms.

Communist Party general secretary Hu Jintao highlighted the need for China to become a global cultural power - matching its rising economic clout - in his report to the party's 18th national congress yesterday. "Cultural strength and competitiveness symbolise a country's economic strength and its national revitalisation," he said.

Investing in North Korea is becoming a hot topic among Chinese businessmen. Over the last few weeks, a series of business events and investment conferences about North Korea have been held. Chen Jiangfeng, a real-estate developer from Beijing was one of the 150 plus entrepreneurs who attended the investment projects fair held at the GBD Public Diplomacy & Culture Exchange Center at the end of September.

Future prejudices of China will be born not in the columns of the print media and in the radio and TV reports, but in the mushrooming blogs and micro-blogs of the digital world... Future stability will depend not only on what happens in the real world, but also on what happens in the digital world.

What the people think of their leadership and government will be increasingly reflected not in the traditional print and TV media, but in the digital media and in the blogs and micro-blogs of the digital world. The digital image of China in the international net community will increasingly influence governmental and non-governmental perceptions of China.

In what experts describe as an unusual form of public diplomacy, U.S. colleges have created State-Department-funded “American Cultural Centers” in partnership with Chinese host universities. “Their primary purpose is to expose Chinese audiences to the depth and breadth of U.S. culture,” said Erik W. Black, an assistant cultural affairs officer at the American embassy in Beijing.

An agreement has been reached between Nepal and China to establish a Chinese Cultural Center in Nepal. Secretary at the Ministry of Cultural, Tourism and Civil Aviation, Yagya Prasad Gautam and Chinese Ambassador to Nepal Yang Houlan on Thursday signed the agreement at the Ministry.