On November 21, 2004, the first Confucius Institute opened its doors in Seoul, South Korea. The placement was by design, like every aspect of this public diplomacy endeavor by an increasingly confident Chinese government. The Korean peninsula, for example, has a long history of adhering to the Confucian system of thought, society and governance. Even more symbolically, before the Sino-Japanese War of 1894-5, Korea was a part of China’s traditional cultural empire. In fact, it was the last part to fall.

For years the Indian security establishment has been excessively obsessed with Pakistan and the proxy war it has waged against India. Over the past half a dozen years, the focus has gradually shifted to meeting the rising challenge posed by China’s rising military capabilities in Tibet. Apart from two new army divisions now deployed in the country’s north-east after they were sanctioned in 2009, the Indian Cabinet has also a fortnight ago cleared a new mountain strike corps specifically meant for offensive operations against China.

These past two months the Chinese Navy’s Type 920 Hospital Ship, a vast 14,000 ton floating hospital called “The Peace Ark,” docked in major cities of South Asia providing key medical services and surgeries to local residents. Over the course of the next few weeks the ship will sail to Bangladesh, Myanmar, Indonesia and Cambodia before heading back to China in October. During the five day visit to Pakistan, the ship’s staff clocked in 10 hour days totaling 2,029 outpatient visits and 28 surgeries.

A new campaign by the ruling Chinese Communist Party to promote President Xi Jinping's new slogan, "the China dream," around the world is unlikely to succeed, analysts said on Friday. China's deputy propaganda minister Cai Mingzhao recently called on propaganda officials at all levels to "deeply understand the weighty meaning of the strategic thinking around the Chinese dream, and to...do everything in their power to preserve its values."

Over the last day and a half, international attention has fixated on the Egyptian military’s bloody crackdown on supporters of deposed President Mohamed Morsi. While the UN, EU, and Western and regional nations were quick to come forth with their own reactions to the events, Asia has remained relatively quiet. This was certainly true of China, which said little for the first 24 hours or so of the crackdown. On Thursday afternoon, however, the Foreign Ministry released a terse statement.

A Cirque du Soleil performance left a Beijing audience audibly shocked when a banned image of the iconic Tiananmen "tank man" protester was displayed on giant screens in front of 15,000 people. The politically-charged image -- of a sole, unarmed protester blocking a line of tanks during a 1989 government crackdown in Tiananmen Square -- was displayed for about four seconds as part of a montage of protest imagery during a performance of Michael Jackson's "They Don't Care About Us," according to a post on That's Beijing magazine's website.

In a recently televised broadcast of Chinese Character Dictation Conference — China’s equivalent of a spelling bee — the nation’s best and brightest were asked to write, in its traditional form, a word that stumped 70% of the teenage contestants and a startling 90% of the grown-up audience (who, as voluntary spectators at a spelling bee, were probably no literary slouches themselves). The word that eluded this extremely well-read crowd was toad. Pause and consider that for a moment.

Though things sure aren’t looking good for US universities, Wisconsin has it unusually bad. Decades of plummeting investment in higher education has left it among the US’s 10 worst states. Fear of debt mean Wisconsin students are balking at paying for college, denting revenue even more. But what can Wisconsin universities do to drum up funding? The University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee has a plan.