It is designed to be the creative hub that catapults local film-makers towards the heights achieved by Hollywood animation giants such as Pixar and DreamWorks. China has opened a $4.5bn yuan (£420m) facility in Tianjin, near Beijing, aimed at producing films that can compete with the best of the west.

Given its lesser standing in terms of international public opinion compared to the West, China should strive for the right to speak in public diplomacy in cyberspace, strengthen the universal participation of the public diplomacy on the Internet, formulate a public diplomacy strategy for cyberspace and proactively build up a national brand.

With a long-term strategy in mind, China should learn to fully utilize the Internet. China's "Internet users-based reporters" can disseminate facts to every corner and Internet community around the world through social networking websites and change the misperceptions about China held by the international community.

India's focus on using soft power to enhance trade and investment with Africa is clearly far more appealing to local partners than the breathless grab for resources that Africans have come to associate with most of its other foreign investors.

A visiting Chinese medical team, on its international tour, launched a free eye surgical treatment campaign in Yangon. The Chinese medical team's "Tour of Sight" will conduct a week-long surgical treatment on cataract patients by surgeons from the No. 1 People's Hospital of Yunnan province.

Authorities in Inner Mongolia sought to calm some of the worst ethnic strife in two decades by pledging to address concerns of the local Mongol population about the environmental costs of mining in the resource-rich region, and by announcing that a Han Chinese will be tried for murder over the death of a young Mongol man.

LinkedIn Corp. has established its Asia-Pacific headquarters in Singapore and plans to set up a Japan office later this year, as the company seeks to grow its regional footprint. The headquarters will serve as a gateway for regional expansion, and support LindkedIn's existing operations in Australia and India.

And that could place the 50-year-old US manned spaceflight programme—and its benefits to US prestige—in jeopardy, according to Eric Sterner, an analyst with The Marshall Institute in Washington, D.C. ‘The vehicle signifies a continued commitment to human spaceflight, which plays into American soft power,’ Sterner says. ‘So, it has potential benefit there.’