Unless Congress steps in, there is a real danger that a strategic asset of great value to the United States and to freedom-loving listeners around the world will be wasted. The battle for hearts and minds did not end with the Cold War (which broadcasting can help win, by the way). Far from it.

Right now many people in the west are quite anxious about the rise of China. Many people in China are very skeptical about the US 's intention towards rising China...we cannot discount the huge importance the US and China's relationship implies to the world. We cannot afford letting confrontation prevail and cooperation wither between our nations.

Then in early June, Li Congjun, president of the extraordinarily important Chinese global news service, Xinhua, published a statement in the Wall Street Journal as part of the process of being more public... Li declared a set of principles that, he thought, should govern information flows in the next several decades.

I’ve been tracking elements of China’s complicated and ambitious policy of expanding its information sphere to a possibly waiting world. In late May, I heard Dr. Hu Zhengrong, one of China’s most distinguished ambassadors to the international academic world, give a talk on this “going out” policy to the International Communications Association in Boston.

No longer does the region assume that peace is a given and Chinese economic growth will not create other problems. Instead, the focus is on managing conflicts and attempting to allay mutual suspicions through dialogue. But it is too late for China to restore the status quo ante...balancing diplomatic necessities with nationalistic impulses is proving difficult.

Africa – once considered the lab for Chinese companies’ reach outside - is being relegated into a destination with too many risk factors. Safer political destinations and countries closer to home are likely to benefit from the shift. The readjustment has been in the works for some time but the uprisings in Tunisia, Egypt and Libya have made those subtle shifts more pronounced.

It's hard to argue that the rise of China, taken on the whole, is anything but good for the global economy. Yet few people see China that way. Instead, they focus on the competition China has created, or the jobs many believe China has “stolen.” However, even those who realize, or even directly benefit from, China's advance still can't but feel uneasy about that advance.

Australia will launch a new initiative to attract more visitors from China, as tourists from the U.S. and Japan stay put in the face of uncertain economies and the strong Aussie dollar. The campaign will focus on collecting research on China's emerging middle class and its main cities.