China is steadily gaining the hard power that comes from factories and finance.... But lasting influence in the world has come more from soft than hard power: ideas for living, models of individual, commercial, and social life that people emulate because they are attracted rather than because they are compelled.

Hundreds of Chinese Students and Faculty filled the auditorium of Tianjin University of Sport for the inauguration ceremony of a unique new center that will share U.S. culture through the medium of sport.

Much ado has been made about burgeoning Chinese soft power, and how China is increasing its public diplomacy and extending its soft power reach. From expanding the number of Confucius Institutes around the world, to a growing international broadcasting effort, China has been actively working to wield more signficant soft power influence.

Over the past decade, China's economic and military might has grown impressively. This has frightened its neighbors into looking for allies to balance China's increase in hard power. But if a country can also increase its soft power of attraction, its neighbors feel less need to balance its power.

American French Fry Brother," the nickname of an American study-abroad student, is now trending on Sina Weibo after he fed a homeless woman on the streets of Nanjing a packet of fries and some water..."Kindness has no borders," Sina Weibo said of Lu's act of philanthropy and McDonalds diplomacy, "Let kind hearts melt away indifference.

Al-Jazeera said it “has had to close” its English-language bureau in Beijing since Chinese authorities refused to renew the visa and press credentials of correspondent Melissa Chan. The expulsion does not affect the network’s Arabic-language bureau.

Even our soft power is not as uncontested as we may like to think. The global marketplace of ideas, fertilized by the Internet, ensures that different countries and cultures illuminate their own paths, affirm their own traditions and provide competing visions of the world to come. Yet, no new grand "-ism" is taking shape and no one country is becoming the new paragon.

China's mixed human rights record is not just bad for its citizens. It is a strategic weakness that complicates its foreign relations and diminishes its soft power. The state's harsh treatment of individuals and minorities regularly disrupts its bilateral relationships.