On the first day of our trip, the MPD student delegation to China visited Peking University (PKU). We met with Professors Wang Dong and Yu Wanli as well as students of international relations to discuss the U.S.-China Bi-National Commission Report on Mutual Trust and their perspectives on Chinese public diplomacy.

APDS Blogger: Frank Cheng

BEIJING. On the first day of our trip, the MPD student delegation to China visited Peking University (PKU). We met with Professors Wang Dong and Yu Wanli as well as students of international relations to discuss the U.S.-China Bi-National Commission Report on Mutual Trust and their perspectives on Chinese public diplomacy.

The oldest Chinatown in the world is not in New York or San Francisco or even Yokohama. It is in Manila, a fact that comes up often when Beijing talks about its longstanding connection to the islands that lie about 600 miles to the southeast. Similarly, China boasts of its three Confucius Institutes in the Philippines where Filipinos can learn Mandarin and appreciate the many facets of Chinese culture.

China’s Communist Party has branched out into the development of online games in a bid to inculcate its ideology upon the nation’s young people.

Crater Lake National Park may soon have a sister park in southeast China's Fujian Province. Park Superintendent Craig Ackerman and Carolyn Hill, executive director of the Crater Lake National Park Trust, are working with Chinese officials as well as the Oregon Legislature and others to create a sister-park agreement between Oregon's only national park and the Mount Wuyi World Heritage and Cultural Site in Fujian Province.

Ten new movie screens open each day in China as the popularity of cinema soars in the country, but the appeal of Chinese films has failed to maintain the pace.

Japan's economy is suffering. While Japan's political parties are struggling to come up with policies to save the country, territorial disputes and the "China threat" theory ignite public sentiment. There is no doubt that newly elected Prime Minister Shinzo Abe will make use of these issues.

It would seem, from this quick thumbnail sketch, that Chinese soft power has been extraordinarily successful in the Philippines as in the rest of Asia. But that’s only part of the story. China, after all, has not restricted itself solely to the exercise of soft power to increase its influence in the region.