Mr. Aquino’s visit highlights China’s successful use of soft power to build relationships based on inducements and gestures of goodwill rather than aggression and interference in domestic affairs. China’s success is evident in turning Southeast Asia into a peaceful and prosperous backyard that allows it to concentrate on modernizing its economy.

"Hallyu, into the future with the world." This is the theme for the 2011 Korea Nation Branding Convention, which aims to reinforce how the Korean Wave, or Hallyu, connects with the world and how to share a better vision for Korea's future.

"The government does not trust the Foreign Service, does not understand public diplomacy and is only belatedly awakening to the re-emergence of the Asia-Pacific as the centre of the global political economy," said Copeland, now a fellow at both the University of Toronto's Munk School of Global Affairs and the University of Southern California's Center on Public Diplomacy.

Polling for self-understanding. Opinion research has the role of giving the entire society, and groups within it, a better understanding of their cultural identities and where they stand on various issues. Opinion research consistently finds that familiarity breeds, not contempt, but appreciation.

UBS has announced that David Hayward Evans is its new head of philanthropy and values-based investing Asia-Pacific, based in Singapore...He also managed public-private partnerships for public diplomacy campaigns undertaken by the British government in China and India.

It's inevitable that the economic problems have put a dent in our soft power," he says. "In material terms, it's almost a non-story. The math in the Standard & Poor's downgrade was incorrect.

These initiatives are part of the Indian government's 'Look East' policy. ICCR president talked with Shobhan Saxena about India's growing soft power and need for more engagement with countries in our extended neighbourhood...

July is typically the time of year when North Korea makes peace overtures toward the United States...Last week, Pyongyang's chief nuclear negotiator arrived in New York...As if on cue, one day later, the Korean Central News Agency... called for a "peace agreement" with the U.S.