In the context of major changes and major adjustments of the world, China's diplomacy became an important fulcrum for lifting the “Chinese dream”. China’s new leadership’s visits do not only create a favorable external environment for the “Chinese dream”, but also make opportunities for the docking of “Chinese dream” with the “world dream”.

As Chinese swell the ranks at western universities, the numbers of foreign students studying in China are also burgeoning -- increasing by 10% in a year to more than 290,000 in 2011, according to the Chinese Ministry of Education (MOE).

Much debate has followed since Joseph Nye defined soft power in the 1990s as “the ability to get what you want through attraction rather than through coercion.” Realists usually consider soft power a consequence of the hard one – the kind that comes from missiles and economic strength – while others see it as a smarter, complementary way to ensure that national goals are achieved.

They represent a large component of Hong Kong's middle and moneyed classes…Many returned with educations and English skills acquired in Canada's best schools and universities. But the Hong Kong government has failed to acknowledge this vast community because it does not officially recognise their Canadian identity out of deference to China's nationality laws, which preclude dual citizenship.

At the end of this year, New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art will present a major survey—“Ink Art: Past as Present in Contemporary China” (10 December-6 April 2014). Meanwhile, in Hong Kong, the planned M+ museum is seeking a specialist contemporary ink curator. Hong Kong, in fact, has been the cradle of the new ink movement since the mid-20th century.

Russia is more or less liked in China, Chile and Ghana, of all places. The Chinese seem to be getting used to their newly acquired status as a (nearly) global power. Their view of their northern neighbor is mellowing as the scale of comparison of the two countries’ economic and military might increasingly tilts toward Beijing. In Chile (as in many other Latin American countries) Russia is still seen as an inheritor of the Soviet Union’s anti-US mantle.

It is not hard to outshine the West in Africa, given the horrifying record of Western nations there. As I have documented in my Monitor article “The Ravaging of Africa” (October 2002) and the radio documentary of the same title (2007), U.S. imperial strategy towards Africa has devastated the continent.

Visiting Chinese Premier Li Keqiang and his German counterpart Angela Merkel held talks to map out future mutual cooperation and reached an important consensus on deepening the strategic partnership between the two nations.