Prime Minister Narendra Modi has come up with a clever and unexpected move of extending a new $2 billion line of credit to Bangladesh. It will make China sit up and ponder deeper over its chequebook diplomacy. It will also send a message to smaller neighbours like Maldives which is playing a teasing game with India and refusing to free former president Mohammed Nasheed.

China-Japan tensions may still be high, thanks to unresolved wartime issues and a territorial dispute, but that didn’t stop Chinese fans from flocking to see the Japanese cartoon character Doraemon on the big screen this week. Stand By Me Doraemon, a 3-D animated film about the blue robotic cat, earned $33.47 million in its opening weekend and reached a four-day total of $38 million by Tuesday. 

For years, Chinese communist ideologues have complained that the People’s Republic of China does not have enough “discourse power” (from the Chinese term, “huayu quan”)—meaning, the ability to speak and have others listen, and determine the bounds of debate—in international affairs. [...] China was the guest of honour at BookExpo America, held at the Javits Center from May 27 to May 29. There were over 500 hundred Chinese exhibitors occupying 25,000 square feet of floor space.

These are not the Chinese athletes you’ve seen on TV, those scarily synchronized divers or the gymnasts plucked from preschools for their bone structure. The Ultimate Frisbee players running and diving all over these fields are too scrappy, too goofy and having way too much fun. Ultimate Frisbee (often called just Ultimate as “Frisbee” is a trademarked brand) is growing in China, and 17 teams gathered here in Beijing for the national championship in late May.

BEIJING – The latest “Doraemon” movie has scored the biggest box-office revenue for animated films in China, brightening the atmosphere between the two countries as they gradually mend strained ties.

“Stand By Me Doraemon,” a three-dimensional movie, was released in theaters across China last Thursday. It was the first Japanese movie shown in China after the Japanese government effectively nationalized the Senkaku Islands in the East China Sea in September 2012, touching off strong reactions among both the Chinese leadership and public.

Mahjong is nearly ubiquitous in China. The clicking of tiles is a subtle background noise that visitors might notice as they stroll the streets and parks of the country. Mahjong is not new to the world outside of China, but its rising popularity is making the game into a de-facto form of Chinese cultural diplomacy. [...] Foreign visitors took note of the game's popularity and entrepreneurs exported the game from China to the US in the 1920s.