This past week, even as net users across the country were discovering that China’s Great Firewall has been upgraded and that many VPNs no longer work, China’s state-run Xinhua wire service was busy using Twitter. It’s the kind of frustrating irony that Chinese web users are used to by now; the nation embracing popular foreign web platforms to try to get its own message out while simultaneously working tirelessly to ensure that its citizens cannot access those same platforms.

Dalian Wanda Group, the world's biggest owner of movie theatres, is in talks with leading Hollywood studios to co-produce films and is looking to buy and build hotels in major U.S. cities as the Chinese firm eyes a $10 billion (6 billion pounds) 'soft power' spending spree.

India's decision to accede to the 1976 Asean Treaty of Amity and Cooperation in July 2003 was considered a major milestone in its diplomatic annals due to its swiftness and timeliness. Immediately, it upgraded India's status as well as its role in Asean.

These days we often hear international traders referring to the delta as China's "workshop to the world". This year, 20 years later, China's newly elected general secretary of the Communist Party of China Central Committee, Xi Jinping, chose Guangdong and the delta as his first inspection tour destination. He seemed determined to emphasise continuity in China's opening up and reform policy, and its modernisation and innovation drive.

This past Thanksgiving break, Ben Hubley ’15 traveled to China to compete in the 5th Chinese Bridge Competition, a Chinese proficiency contest for foreign high school students, held in Kunming City. Out of 104 contestants from 45 countries between the ages of 15 and 20, Hubley placed third in the individual competition after a student from Singapore placed first and a student from Russia placed second.

The India-China “battle for Buddha” has now reached Myanmar, with New Delhi sponsoring an International Conference on Buddhist Cultural Heritage in Yangon over the weekend, while Beijing has since last year been trying to leverage the legacy of “Shakya Muni” to connect with the religious majority in its south-western neighbour.

A mixture of native Chinese and Americans, we hope to accomplish an ambitious set of goals: to gain an understanding of how public diplomacy is thought about and engaged in academic contexts as well as how it is innovatively used in practice—through film, at airports, over the Internet, in media, and by corporations.