The Philippines and Japan’s charm offensives towards China appear to have failed as Beijing seeks to isolate both powers within the region. In recent weeks both the Philippines and Japan have made a number of overtures to China aimed at mending strained bilateral ties. Just this week, for instance, the chief of staff of the Philippine military, Emmanuel Bautista, pledged that his country would continue its no-confrontation doctrine in the South China Sea, while also saying that it would consider allowing Chinese naval ships to use the Subic port.

A month after arriving in Hong Kong, the United States’ consul general is getting a crash course in the city’s linguistics. In his first Facebook post introducing himself to local residents, Clifford Hart—a veteran diplomat who has served multiple tours in China—declared that he was thrilled to be the U.S.’s consul general in the former British colony, and was “look[ing] forward to finding out the things that make us alike, rather than different.”

In a symbolic move, the Chinese government would appear to have made their conquest of Tibet nearly complete. Hongai village, the exiled Dalai Lama’s ancestral home that rests on a mountain peak, is receiving a 2.5 million yuan makeover in the form of redevelopment. The house where Tibet’s spiritual leader grew up is not to be spared. The structure is now surrounded by a three-meter high wall and is being watched by security cameras. The Dalai Lama’s boyhood home is the final physical spot in the mainland dedicated to the man whom Beijing calls a “wolf in monk’s robes.”

So China — as in, the People’s Republic of — is really into the Little Mermaid, and not that saccharine Disney cartoon we feed our tumescent American children. The Hans Christian Andersen fairytale is apparently a huge deal in China, so much so that Denmark has been able to establish a strong diplomatic relationship with China almost entirely through the famous bronze Little Mermaid statue in Copenhagen.

It often seems the more well-known a concept becomes, the less it is understood. Such was the case with Francis Fukuyama’s End of History theory, which proclaimed—quite accurately thus far— that the end of the Cold War was also the end of the Hegelian dialectic struggles between opposing universalistic worldviews. With communism and fascism discredited that world was left with only one remaining self-proclaimed universal ideology, that of liberal democracy.

I live in Edinburgh, Scotland, and for me the star turn at this year's Edinburgh International Festival was the Beijing People's Art Theatre's production of Shakespeare's "Coriolanus." This was Chinese “soft power” at its best. The play was well chosen. Strangely, for a play written four hundred years ago when England was still an absolute monarchy, "Coriolanus" is a critique of democracy, set in ancient republican Rome, as England had never experienced such a thing.

Bo Xilai, a Chinese politican beloved in his hometown, was once considered a top contender for his country’s leadership; now, after a dramatic and sudden fall, he is on trial for corruption and abuse of power. He stands accused of not only taking millions of dollars in bribes, but also of covering up the murder of a British businessman by his own wife. But to one veteran China watcher, Cheng Li of the Brookings Institution, the trial says more about China’s leadership than it does about Bo.

A minor protest in Anhui Province has grabbed the central government's attention in China. According to Radio Free Asia, on August 10, two thousand protestors laid siege to government offices in Xuancheng City in Anhui’s Jixi County, in the Jingzhou Township. The crowds overturned cars, smashed the windows of a government office, and assaulted government officials. Reports on this incident went relatively unnoticed, partially because the Central Propaganda Department (also known as the Publicity Department) got ahead of the story by issuing a stern warning to state media outlets.