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.

Chinese Ambassador Liu Xiaoming said at the launch of China Culture Season that, thanks to the concerted efforts of both sides, China-UK people-to-people exchange has been more active in recent years than ever before.