What does Asia’s increasing prominence mean for ASEAN – a ten-member political community whose regional presence has received growing attention from the global community of late? Already Washington has embarked on its “forward-deployed diplomacy” strategy in the region as evinced by Clinton’s attendance at last year’s ASEAN Regional Forum and her landmark visit to Burma in December.

A breakthrough in the final hours of Xi Jinping's US tour has eased restrictions on imports of US films into China, and could lead to more 3D and Imax films being made in Hollywood...For Chinese, "more US movies may force domestic producers to take a correct attitude toward their works and learn from others."

China has agreed to open its market to more US films and provide better terms to US studios. "This agreement with China will make it easier than ever before for US studios and independent filmmakers to reach the fast-growing Chinese audience, supporting thousands of American jobs in and around the film industry," US Vice-President Joe Biden said in a statement.

Competitors, be it hard currency (trade) or hardware and software (information technology), India and China are, and have reasons to be, competing in exercising their soft power as well. Inheritors of ancient cultures that have influenced others for centuries, both vigorously "export" them as part of "soft diplomacy".

Granted, Mr Lin’s own path to stardom is in itself unprecedented, but in America, the unprecedented is possible. Chinese basketball fans have taken note of this. Mr Lin’s story may be a great and inspiring proof of athleticism to the Chinese people, but it is also unavoidably a story of American soft power.

Without the sex, gore and contemporary politics Beijing's censors deplore, animation is family-oriented and easily redubbed, making it safe and both importable and exportable, and thus likely to lead the charge in a trans-Pacific race for soft power – one that Hollywood's currently leading.

Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton have been busy reassuring European allies that the U.S. was not drawing down its commitment. Panetta even went so far as to claim that Europe is the “security partner of choice for military operations and diplomacy around the world.”