Education officials from China and the directors of Confucius Institutes in the Ibero-American countries have opened a conference to consider ways of boosting the overseas teaching of the Chinese language.

Despite promises made in February by Public Diplomacy and Diaspora Affairs Minister Yuli Edelstein, the government’s latest hasbara campaign focused on involving average Israelis in the effort to defend the Jewish state abroad has remained an exclusively Hebrew affair.

Great Britain, France and Germany are the most active in promoting their cultural relations with Georgia, according to The Financial’s study. British Council, Goethe-Institute Georgia and A. Dumas Centre conducted the majority of cultural awareness events since 2008. Germany generally spends the most.

A new federal program to support the Russian language abroad will appear in 2011, the head of the Agency for the CIS Affairs and Compatriots Living Abroad Farit Mukhametshin told Russia’s prime minister Vladimir Putin during a meeting in Moscow.

The University Linkages Programme at Cairo University represents the unique collaboration between BG Egypt, Cairo University and the British Council. It provides much-needed English language tuition and professional skills to the university's Petroleum Geosciences students.

"Of course, we had in the past and also now Taiwanese students studying in Israeli leading universities, but this is the first time that Taiwanese students will benefit from our government scholarships" said Raphael Gamzou, the head of the Israel Economic and Cultural Office in Taipei.

Thirty students from across the United States traveled to Kyoto last month under a new U.S. government initiative to boost the country's supply of Japanese speakers, part of its effort to make the country more competitive globally. The student trip is sponsored by the U.S. State Department...

Along with global initiatives such as development aid and promoting the Chinese language, these scholarships are not simply academic awards but part of a larger strategy by China to cultivate friends abroad and grow its soft power to match its burgeoning military and economic strength.