He may be no Black Mamba like Kobe Bryant, but Vice President Jejomar Binay unabashedly dribbled around Yao Ming, as if challenging the 7’6” former Houston Rockets center to a one-on-one. A shocked Binay welcomed Yao and his Shanghai Sharks to his Coconut Palace Monday morning, gaping at the giant and looking up to shake hands with the retired NBA player.

According to a recently released report, India is among the top-10 most powerful countries in the world. This is a first-of-its-kind study of "national power" by leading strategic experts and scholars from the Foundation for National Security Research (FSNR) in New Delhi.

Forget panda diplomacy. China has added a new weapon to its soft-power arsenal — home-grown luxury cars. On Friday, Beijing donated 20 Chinese-made Hongqi, or Red Flag, sedans worth around $2.3 million, to the Pacific nation of Fiji.

Scottish Cabinet Secretary for Culture and External Affairs Fiona Hyslop on Thursday hailed cultural exchanges between Scotland and the Chinese side to promote friendship and people-to-people exchanges.

China is a big country with a variety of well-developed regional cuisines that are generally considered delicious. And while we know there are many things China doesn't do well, soft power-wise, the one area where it could be said to have some soft power at its disposal is food. Chinese restaurants can more or less be found anywhere Chinese people can be found, which is many, many places.

Accusing the US of trying to impose "cultural colonialism" by unleashing its soft power to undermine China's political system, a top Chinese General today sought to counter western "cultural infiltration". "Western cultural infiltration techniques are very clever in their deception and hidden nature. This 'cultural colonialism' is like 'slowly boiling a frog': the young generation can easily lose its will to resist without knowing."

China and Russia, two of the world's pre-eminent authoritarian states, just don't get soft power. That, at least, is what Joseph Nye claims in a new commentary in Foreign Policy... China also has successes. What other state, I ask, has turned Asian authoritarianism and state-run capitalism into political brands that appeal to non-democratic states and rulers the world over? You can argue it undermines democratic governance, but you can't say they have not been effective - and kind of soft.