The American Heart Association and China Tuesday formalized a partnership to educate the Chinese about cardiovascular disease and train people in CPR as ways to reduce deaths in the country. The agreement provides for exchanges of researchers, doctors and public health specialists to work alongside counterparts in the U.S. and China. It also provides for teams of scientists to work together to advance scientific knowledge of cardiovascular health.

On January 28, 1979, Mr. Deng Xiaoping, then China’s vice premier, started his nine-day official visit to the United States, the first such visit by a top Chinese leader since the founding of the People’s Republic. There are many memorable moments from his tour, but the most iconic is undoubtedly when he put on a ten-gallon cowboy hat and waved to the audience in a Texas rodeo. That moment humanized Chinese leaders, who had been demonized by American leaders and mass media for nearly two decades.

China's Vice-Premier Liu Yandong on Monday challenged university presidents from both China and the United States to deepen and broaden cooperation in higher education. The presidents and chancellors of more than 50 major US and Chinese universities met at Rice University in Houston for the US-China University Presidents Roundtable. They discussed global education, research collaboration and cultural exchange.

The impressive participation around the world on International Yoga Day is indeed a testimony to India’s immense reservoir of soft power. In his energetic engagement with world leaders, Prime Minister Narendra Modi has put a special emphasis on cultural diplomacy. Modi should, however, remember that India’s soft power has the greatest impact when official New Delhi keeps its heavy hand away from it. India is not new to cultural diplomacy. India’s self-discovery of its rich cultural heritage and its global reach played an important role in shaping its modern nationalism.

China is using its soft power in the form of foreign aid to change the world despite criticism from Western countries that its approach lacks transparency.

The Silk Road Economic Belt and the 21st Century Maritime Silk Road (Belt and Road) initiatives are the latest strategies in Beijing's foreign aid policy. Around 76 percent of the loans Beijing granted between January 2014 and March 2015 were to countries included in the trade and infrastructure projects aimed at linking China and Europe.

India’s armed forces yesterday demonstrated the country’s ‘soft-power’, participating in the first International Yoga Day at the highest battlefield of Siachen to the South China Sea and Mediterranean Sea.
Soldiers practised yoga at the Siachen glacier, the world’s highest battlefield at 5,400m altitude, and also in Ladakh and Kargil, along with all major stations across the country.
The Indian Navy, observing “Yoga across the Oceans”, had ship crews stationed in international waters, from the Mediterranean to the South China Sea practising yoga.

Chinese Vice Premier Liu Yandong on Sunday called for more "basketball diplomacy" activities to strengthen mutual understanding and friendship between the Chinese and American peoples.

Liu made the appeal during a visit to NBA basketball team Houston Rockets' home field Toyota Center, where a group of Chinese student athletes from Tsinghua High School are working on a basketball training program.

She said sports are an important part in people-to-people exchanges, which have played a unique and significant role in China-U.S. ties.