China also has big stakes in influencing the situation on the Korean Peninsula.... The two countries also need to strengthen public diplomacy. Anti-China and anti-Korea sentiments still linger. South Koreans need to treat Chinese well in Korea. Maltreatment of Chinese workers and students here has often been the source of their less-friendly sentiments on South Korea.

In these times, it's apt to project a Chinese global narrative through increasingly sophisticated media, and while China is promoting Mandarin in more than 300 Confucius Institutes all over the world, it is also increasingly attracting more foreign students to its universities.

Now, scores of brands with sagging fortunes in the United States are reinventing themselves as must-have luxury items in the Far East, a strategy they've adopted with particular fervor in the wake of the global economic downturn.

Chinese-U.S. co-productions are on the rise, and Christian Bale, Kevin Spacey, and Keanu Reeves are among the stars who have sought projects here. So eager are American studios to crack the Chinese market that MGM recently edited Chinese villains out of the remake of Red Dawn, replacing them with North Koreans.

Yet again we are confronted with a dilemma: when is culture an instrument of soft power? We talk about cultural diplomacy, cultural exchanges and even cultural influence. What is less discussed is how cultural paraphernalia connect to, integrate with, and ultimately enhance a nation’s soft power capital.

One of China’s leading papers, the Global Times, conducted an online survey that asked people if they are optimistic about U.S.-China relations after Vice President Joe Biden’s visit. Of the 13,000 responses recorded by Monday, some 93-percent said Biden’s visit did not make them optimistic.

It must be a testament to the dearth of interesting diplomatic discussions that a brawl between the Georgetown Hoyas and the Bayi Rockets became the headline news out of the U.S.-China summitry between Vice Presidents Biden and Xi. For many, the event became a metaphor for the animosity presumed to underpin the U.S.-China relationship and, possibly, a lack of respect to Biden.

What was the point of Vice-President Joseph Biden’s just ended visit to China? It is surely not enough to point vaguely to the supposed goodwill generated by formulaic visits between leaders. But the Biden visit appears to have had only the vaguest of agendas and if anything put US weakness on display at a time when China is boasting its global importance.