Generations of Indian diplomats have been using mango for years to win both friends and foes. [...] Foreigners didn’t know how to tackle the fruit, a fact happily taken advantage of by one Indian diplomat living in Geneva. He once met Dag Hammarskjold, the UN secretary-general, who told him he kept getting mangoes from Indians which he didn’t know how to eat. [...] It was reported in 1955 that as Chou ate his mango “his beetling brow relaxed, his lips rippled into a smile… Thereafter, he ate out of Mr. Nehru’s hand and signed the famous joint declaration.”

With the International Olympic Committee (IOC) set to have chosen Paris over Los Angeles as the site for the 2024 Olympics, it is timely to ask: Is hosting the Olympics good for a nation’s brand, and do they provide a good financial return on investment? [...] He also noted that the concept of nation-branding pervaded China’s handling of the 2008 Beijing games. “In China their goal was broad recognition as a leader on the global stage.” He said that China was largely successful, but that in terms of political reputation, the country was thrown into a negative light.

Brown’s upcoming visit to Beijing will focus on keeping up the COP21 Paris accords momentum Trump wants to radically reverse. California’s aggressive stance on pollution controls and environmental standards will be highlighted. The governor wants to make a lasting difference in the world. [...] California’s interest and right to combat climate change and seek China’s support is understandable and has precedent. But what’s in it for China?

Efforts by China to forge a new global alliance on climate change and sidestep US president Donald Trump’s decision to pull out of the Paris Agreement were boosted after California governor Jerry Brown affirmed his state’s climate change alliance with Beijing. Mr Brown, governor of the state with the largest economy in the US, has been in China for a high-profile visit during which he pledged to co-operate in shaping global climate change policies and signed a deal with China to co-operate on clean technology.

China has scored a major victory in soft diplomacy by quietly launching its own Nalanda University, while the original Nalanda campus in Bihar, planned almost a decade ago, is still stuck with 455-acre dead space. China’s education ministry had managed to keep the plan a secret till a few weeks ago when it formally announced the enrolment for the Nanhai Buddhist College in Hainan province in May. 

Public diplomacy is perception. Remarkably—and, unthinkably, as recently as one year ago—today China seems to be the world’s most likeable superpower. [...] Li, who landed in Berlin on Wednesday, hoped to use his three-day trip, with stops in Germany and Belgium, to “voice support for an open economy, free trade and investment [and] global regional peace and stability."  Trump, on the other hand, failed to support NATO, decried Germany as “very bad” for its trade policies, and even pushed aside Montenegro’s prime minister to the front of a group photo.