“China’s bilateral trade with Latin American will increase tremendously,” Zhang Shixue, a researcher on Latin America at the Chinese State Council–affiliated Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, told Xinhua. “This canal is very much in Latin America’s best interest and in China’s best interest. It’s a kind of win-win.”

It is a positive image China wants the world to see, one aspect of a controversial program to resettle into permanent homes Tibetan herders who have wandered these parts for centuries. [...]The government rejects criticism that it has repressed Tibetan religious freedom and culture, saying its rule has ended serfdom and brought development to a backward region. The government says resettlement gives herders access to health care and schooling and lets them benefit from China’s booming economy by offering new job opportunities, like working in tourism.

China is practicing the gunboat diplomacy of the Western imperialist powers that it despised. From the existential threat to China of being “carved up like a melon” by the Western powers during the “Century of Humiliation” from the turbulent mid-19th century, it is ironic that it is now engaged in “salami slicing” and “cabbage harvesting” in the disputed territories with its smaller neighbors in the 21st century.

On Tuesday, the China Season of the 2015 China-U.K. Year of Cultural Exchange was launched in London, announcing a series of events to come in the next few months. The events have the goal of exposing U.K. residents to the culture and traditions of China.

A significant number of Americans consider China—the country with whom the United States has arguably the most important bilateral relationship—to be on par with and sometimes even more antagonistic than North Korea, a nation with whom the United States has no diplomatic or economic relations and that regularly threatens the U.S. with impending “final doom.”

China's foreign policy has been undergoing some positive changes in order to allow it to play a bigger role in Asia and the West Pacific region. The changes gained pace after President Xi Jinping pushed for the implementation of the "Belt and Road Initiative", which he proposed in 2013, and advocated Asian people's leadership in Asian affairs [...] in May 2014.

China’s state-sponsored cultural exports inevitably create controversy in the West. Critics warn that educational institutions receiving financial support from the Chinese authoritarian regime risk ceding control of their curriculum, academic freedom and intellectual integrity.