Teaming up with the Gates Foundation isn't just a charitable move on the part of the Chinese government. The partnership is a perfect example of soft power--the spreading of influence through propaganda, public works, and cultural prestige.

The single most important requisite to Korea’s success in attracting foreign investors is nation branding, pure and simple. The planet serves as a global display case.

Chinese animation can act as a vanguard for the export of Chinese culture, said Leng Song, general secretary of the world media research center of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. Animation is rarely affected by cultural barriers and can be easily understood and accepted by the general public, Leng said.

Grassroots Chinese students' associations are taking it upon themselves to bridge the gap between the United States and China at Harvard University. "Representing China today shouldn't be only dumplings and Chinese-style dresses because people from outside China know it already,"

The Chinese communist regime’s United Front soft-power propaganda war aimed at shaping world opinion through culture, film, and media, has just fired an embarrassing dud, with not a single audience member showing up at the 2011 China Movie Culture Week opening night at New York’s Lincoln Center.

At the end of its four-day annual policy meeting, China’s ruling Communist Party approved a programme to make its ideology more popular at home and boost China’s soft power abroad.

Australia should grasp the chance to play a critical role in fostering so-called soft power connections between India and China, thereby boosting its international standing as well as regional harmony. That is the rationale behind the new Soft Power Advocacy and Research Centre at Macquarie University, launched last week.

Laos and Myanmar...are grappling with decisions on whether to build massive hydropower dams on the two significant rivers. The projects could put fragile ecology and associated livelihoods at risk, but the dams could help the two countries reap billions of dollars by exporting the megawatts to China and Thailand, two neighbors with rapidly growing energy demand.