The Ministry of Foreign Affairs on Tuesday established the Department of International Economic Affairs to serve economic diplomacy, which is increasingly important in China's diplomatic blueprint. The move shows that Beijing has recognized its increasing power in the economic field and is moving forward to make better use of it, Chinese experts said.

Japan and China are mounting global diplomatic campaigns in hopes of strengthening their competing claims to the Senkaku Islands in the East China Sea, with Tokyo recently reversing course on its policy of avoiding vigorous counterarguments to the Chinese claims.

On a sunny morning in late September, the great Chinese artist Ai Weiwei sat in the courtyard of his studio in Beijing, lamenting his continued harassment by his country’s authorities. Last year, when they’d detained him for almost three months, they had also taken his passport.

Japan has decided to change tack in promoting its claim to disputed islands in the East China Sea amid an escalation of tensions with China over the territorial dispute, highlighted by a recent verbal tit-for-tat with Beijing at the United Nations. Instead of taking the view that there's no need to proactively promote its cause, Japan plans to step up a PR campaign outlining its claim to the disputed Senkaku Islands.

Until recently, Beijing’s policy in Afghanistan could be characterized as masterful inactivity: It sat on the sidelines of a war that it wanted neither side to win. But the late September visit by security chief Zhou Yongkang, the first by a senior Chinese leader in almost five decades, is the most visible sign that the US 2014 withdrawal date is bringing that spectator status to an end.

Japan has issued a formal complaint after South Korea invited a group of foreign journalists to a disputed island group, in the latest sign of deteriorating diplomatic relations between the two neighbours. Reporters from six US and European media groups, including the Financial Times, travelled to the Dokdo islands – known as Takeshima in Japan – on Thursday on a visit organised by the government.

In China, the Gangnam phenomenon carries a special pique. It has left people asking, Why couldn’t we come up with that?... For now, China’s Gangnam moment seems far off. “In China, culture and the arts develop under the watchful eye of the government, and anything too hip or interesting gets either shut down or bought up."

China’s Ralls Corporation has sued U.S. President Barack Obama for blocking its wind farm deal, the Chinese state news agency Xinhua reported on Wednesday... Ralls claims Obama exceeded his constitutional rights and acted in "an unlawful and unauthorized manner."