The failure of the U.S. campaign to dissuade allies from joining China’s Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank was greeted in some quarters as a sign of American decline. But this episode was not a crisis of American power, which remains unequaled. And while the threat that the bank poses to that power and to the international order it undergirds has been much touted, it is in fact overstated. In fact, the main portent of the episode is not Beijing’s overturning of the international economic order or the arrival of China as a U.S.

So, where does the power of the NDB lie? Precisely in its limited, yet politically powerful, BRICS membership. Its lessened economic power is compensated for by its vast soft power, merely by the fact of limiting its membership to the founding BRICS members.

By all rights, Iceland -- a remote Arctic island inhabited by just 320,000 people -- should be a forgotten backwater. And for most of its history, it was. But in recent decades, the former Danish colony has begun to attract outsized attention from abroad. After its banks were fully privatized in 2003, foreign money poured into the financial sector, which grew to almost ten times the size of national GDP before bursting in a matter of days in October 2008.

An announcement Tuesday by the obscure-sounding Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication, better known as SWIFT, may not get much ink. China's currency, it reported, was used in 8.66 percent of global trade finance transactions in October, the group said. It's now the No. 2 most widely used currency for trade finance, supplanting the euro.

The fifth summit of heads of state from Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa (Brics), which concluded in Durban on Wednesday, announced that formal talks would be held to launch a development bank.

Turkish soap operas, which are widely watched all over the Middle East, are well-known for being one of the most influential tools of Turkish soft power. This soft power, however, does not stem merely from TV soaps, but has also manifested itself in other areas – especially the economy.

As we celebrate 149 years of banking in South Africa we are proud to showcase the various cultural collaborations we’ve initiated over the years. One of our proudest annual events is the Standard Bank Joy of Jazz festival, which brings together international and local jazz artists, jazz lovers and music gurus from around the globe.

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.