A 1969 Logansport High School graduate has recently returned to her Blackford County home as the first non-Chinese artist to exhibit work in the prominent LiRen Gallery in Anshan, China. A retired elementary and middle school art teacher, Leslie Newton is currently the staff visual artist and curator of Arts Place in Portland. Throughout her career in the Jay School Corp., she was involved in the educational exchange program that sent herself, other teachers and students to China.

In an Annie Hall moment at Foreign Policy, the inventor of the term “soft power” explains the shortcomings of Chinese and Russian efforts to cultivate it. “China and Russia make the mistake of thinking that government is the main instrument of soft power. In today’s world, information is not scarce but attention is, and attention depends on credibility.”

As I cruised down the Huangpu River past glimmering Shanghai high-rises with California Governor Jerry Brown and Chinese former NBA player Yao Ming, I could not help thinking that they may have at first blush appeared an odd couple. But their meeting marked not only another chapter in sports diplomacy, but also the culmination of one of the largest U.S.-China trade and investment delegations in history.

Premier Jay Weatherill has made headlines in China, appearing on the Shandong news spruiking a film about Chinese gold miners to more than 100 million viewers. Snapped casually chatting with news anchor Mao Xin, one of the country's most powerful news presenters, Mr Weatherill is hoping the $15 million film, which will be based in Adelaide, will open the door to further economic exchange.

The 3rd Beijing International Film Festival was a public diplomacy showcase this week for Chinese cinema at its best. Banners throughout the capital promoted the festival, the awards ceremony and, not least, the film-selling market in a country that now proudly proclaims itself as the world’s leader in movie theater revenues, ahead of the U.S. And yet, and yet…

BEIJING – The 3rd Beijing International Film Festival was a public diplomacy showcase this week for Chinese cinema at its best. Banners throughout the capital promoted the festival, the awards ceremony and, not least, the film-selling market in a country that now proudly proclaims itself as the world’s leader in movie theater revenues, ahead of the U.S.

And yet, and yet…

Last week, DreamWorks Animation (DWA), the Hollywood studio behind the worldwide blockbuster Kung Fu Panda films, announced that it will cooperate with the China Film Group (CFG) on an animated feature called Tibet Code, an adventure story based on a series of recent Chinese novels set in 9th-century Tibet -- even as China's policies on Tibet are regularly targeted by Western human-rights critics and are a persistent challenge to Beijing's efforts to improve China's international image.

The Indian media is trying to treat China at par with Pakistan over the recent provocations over the border. "Why don't we warn China?" or "India should take a tough stand" are some of the questions being raised by some belligerent mediapersons, but this is a kind of oversimplifying foreign policy issues, something which an important country like India has not prioritised on expected lines.