Water is fast becoming a cause of competition and discord between countries in Asia, where per capita freshwater availability is less than half the global average. The growing water stress threatens Asia’s rapid economic growth and carries risks for investors potentially as damaging as non-performing loans, real estate bubbles and political corruption.
By having its hand on Asia’s water tap, China is therefore acquiring tremendous leverage over its neighbours’ behaviour.

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.

Since the East West Nation Brand Perception Index was first published in 2008, Burma has steadfastly remained in the bottom fifth, and in the second quarter of this year dropped to 176, two places below that of North Korea.

The East-West Center is a Hawaii-based, federally supported institution, long a key part of U.S. outreach to the countries of the Asia and the Pacific and a fixture in Honolulu.

For the past seven years, Canadian street artist Kaid Ashton has been traveling to some of the world's most dangerous slums documenting the people he meets with his camera. He then posts his work on walls around the cities he visits. Ashton's street art is not political. It is about crossing cultures and getting to know people in the process.

According to a press release, the International MANGA Award, as part of the active use of pop culture in public diplomacy, was established to share Japanese pop culture and to help promote understanding of Japan among overseas cartoonists.

Today, such ancient wisdom is proliferating across the whole of China. That the international community can be won over more with soft power has been emphasized by Hu, who has taken measures to spread the knowledge of China's "soft power" across the world.

Byrne and Hall argue that the sheer size of the export education industry is a form of what Joseph Nye famously defined as soft power... Soft power gives Australia an opportunity to pursue its values, promote its ideas and pursue its international interests offshore.