The increased tempo of Beijing’s public diplomacy activities in recent years, from Confucius Institutes to the 2010 Shanghai World Expo, have received poor to mediocre reviews internationally. Expensive projects have been received positively by the Chinese public, but have done little to reverse China’s continued international image problems. Although a narrative of crisis pervades international scholarship on Chinese public diplomacy, there appears little evidence to suggest that Beijing is concerned.

Some commentators have criticized China's State-led efforts to strengthen the country's "soft power." Joseph Nye, to whom the soft power concept is credited, observed that the China just "doesn't get soft power." Big state-funded initiatives, such as the global roll-out of Confucius Institutes and investments in CCTV and Xinhua, have headlined China's culture-heavy public relations drive.

After declaring the nation “open for business,” Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott has set a target of achieving free trade deals with China, Japan and South Korea within just 12 months. Can the recently elected leader succeed where his predecessors failed? Having stated at the APEC summit in Bali that he wished to swiftly conclude eight years of negotiations with China, Abbott told reporters at last week’s East Asian Summit in Brunei that he was adding the nation’s second and third-biggest trading partners to the target list.

In contrast to neighboring countries, former U.S. National Intelligence Director Dennis Blair welcomes the efforts by Prime Minister Shinzo Abe to reinterpret the pacifist Constitution and bolster the nation’s defense capabilities, saying Japan needs to adapt itself to the changing security landscape of the Asia-Pacific region.

President Barack Obama has decided to test whether Iranian President Hassan Rouhani’s “charm offensive” is a legitimate effort to reach an agreement on a more constricted and transparent Iranian nuclear program. With this decision, he embarks on the most transformative and important diplomatic initiative of his presidency.

Upset that the fiscal stalemate in Washington is threatening the global economy, China called for the U.S. dollar to be replaced as the international reserve currency as well as for broader steps to create a "de-Americanized world."

As the world's second largest economy, the fastest growing economy in the G20 and with more than a trillion dollars sitting in various sovereign wealth funds, China has quite a bit of cash to invest. And as the chart below shows, in recent years it has begun loosening the purse strings - in 2005, the Chinese government and Chinese companies collectively invested about $17bn (£11bn) in global assets, according The Heritage Foundation. Last year they invested almost $130bn.