The priciest public-relations expenditure was the 2008 Beijing Olympics, which by some estimates cost $40 billion. The country has financed roads in Brazil, bridges in Zambia, power grids in Cambodia and mining rigs in Uzbekistan. It established Confucius Institutes for Chinese language and culture on 75 US college campuses. It started CCTV America to raise its profile.

...while American policymakers discuss our own plans for aid and development, seldom do we acknowledge how our adversaries also make use of soft power....Most impoverished Afghans delay marriages for years because they cannot afford the price tag. The Iranians, however, know that by subsidizing such marriages, they can win hearts and minds for a generation.

India's soft power has now been on display for at least a couple of decades: ... Bollywood's prodigious celluloid fare has long drawn huge audiences in significant parts of Asia, Africa, and beyond; India's English-language novelists have often edged out native British writers for the prestigious Man Booker Prize; and, of course, yoga studios have become all but ubiquitous in the United States.

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.

So while USAID is very good at quickly mobilizing assistance to disaster-afflicted communities, it carries a lot of political baggage -- so much so in places like Pakistan that the U.S might be better off in the long run by downsizing USAID's direct activities there and working through alternative programs.

This government has no feeling for 'soft power,' " Kinsman says, "because it still has little feeling for the world landscape except from the standpoint of Canadian business interests.

Unfavourable attention may have prompted China to become more public about its aid policy. Even with the will to boost aid transparency, China still faces a “diplomatic dilemma” in enforcing it: to meet compliance both sides must be willing and able, and recipient countries with weak governments often have poor aid oversight.