China is nonetheless active in bilateral relations with member states, and this involves both commercial diplomacy, high-level visits and public diplomacy. The last increasingly revolve around the notion of “helping friends,” whether these are nations on the periphery of Europe in need of investment or simply cash.

The animation park is clearly a priority for the central government, which included animation production in its current five-year national economic plan. Having rapidly increased its political and economic might globally, China is eager to boost its so-called soft power — its cultural appeal and influence — overseas.

An innocuous photograph of Gary Locke, the new US ambassador to China, carrying his own backpack and ordering his own coffee at an airport has charmed Chinese citizens not used to such frugality from their officials. ZhaoHui Tang, a businessman from Bellevue, Washington, took the photo on his iPhone...uploaded the photo to the Chinese social media network Sina Weibo.

Something big is happening in China, and it started soon after the onset of the “Arab Spring” demonstrations and regime changes: the most serious and widespread wave of repression since the Tiananmen Square crackdowns 22 years ago. The spread of protest from one Arab-Islamic country to its neighbors might have seemed predictable. Less so was the effect in China.

China's most celebrated operatic export Tian Hao Jiang's "I Sing Beijing" is a summer program bringing some 20 promising young professionals from the U.S., Europe and South America to China to learn to sing in Mandarin, a program that will culminate with a gala concert at the National Centre for the Performing Arts on August 18.

China’s new and first aircraft carrier isn’t fully operational yet...Why would a truly peaceful-rising country need an aircraft carrier? Joseph S. Nye, Jr., the former dean of Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government rightly credits the “peaceful rising” advertising to current China President Hu Jintao, who stylistically preferred what might be called a foreign-relations approach of “soft power.”

It's inevitable that the economic problems have put a dent in our soft power," he says. "In material terms, it's almost a non-story. The math in the Standard & Poor's downgrade was incorrect.

For uninformed visitors, the sight and sound of foreigners belting it out in Chinese might seem bizarre. But Glenn is part of an unprecedented program called I Sing Beijing that has brought to China 20 young Western performers from the United States, Europe and Central and South America to learn to sing opera in Mandarin. More than 200 people auditioned in Los Angeles, Denver and New York.