While the Chinese government perceives Americanideological influence as a potential strategic threat, the increase of US "soft power" leverage is merely an effect, and not an intentional policy, Robert Daly, Director of the Wilson Center Kissinger Institute on China and the United States, has told RIA Novosti.

China may not be threatening the United States militarily, but it is certainly engaging U.S. companies in a costly cyber war, FBI director James Comey told 60 Minutes on Sunday, and no major business is immune.

Cultural exchange and cooperation is an important part of the China-EU comprehensive strategic partnership. It plays an irreplaceable role in enhancing mutual understanding between people and in promoting the value of our relationship. At the 14th China-EU Summit in 2011, our leaders pointed out that cultural exchange is one of the three pillars of China- EU relations. 

Finance and development ministers from around the world next week will warn of considerable downside risks to the global economy, and call for an effort to protect the world's poor, according to the draft of a communique they plan to issue after a meeting on Saturday.

In the last decade, the European Union has made China a priority of its international strategy. China's fast economic development and its growing importance in the global economy and politics put the country in the focus of the EU's interest. Differently to the US, though, Europe has intensified its educational links with China relatively recently.

Beijing sees the Confucius Institutes as a way to promote its own soft power overseas, similar to the British Council or Germany’s Goethe-Institut.  Yet recently, criticism has come hard and fast. 

In truth, the fears about CIA infiltration and those about Japanese cartoon characters are part of the same anxiety: a feeling that China's lack of soft power presents a weak underbelly to the outside world.

Beijing received more than 540,000 tourists in 26 major scenic areas on Wednesday, also the 65th anniversary of the founding of the People's Republic of China, up 33 percent year on year, local authorities announced on Thursday.