Senator Richard Lugar (R-IN) will publish another major report on public diplomacy shortly. Written by Paul Foldi, senior professional staff on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, this report focuses on Chinese public diplomacy with the inevitable comparison to U.S. efforts. I was given a sneak peak at the report.

The 2011 Taipei International Book Exhibition is now underway at the Taipei World Trade Center. President Ma Ying-jeou spoke at the opening ceremony on Wednesday. He said that Taiwan's "publishing power" is not only an important form of soft power for the Republic of China, which is the official name of Taiwan.

Despite headline-grabbing reports of repression of China’s nascent civil society, there are unmistakable signs in China of the emergence of new organizations and the willingness of government to work with them.

In the debate over what is and is not public diplomacy, here’s another example to throw into the mix. In 2009, the ad agency for Nike China won an award for its series on Liu Xiang, a Chinese phenom in the hurdles. Liu carried the inspirations of China into the Beijing Olympic games in 2008.

China honored its Lunar New Year on February 3, welcoming the Year of the Rabbit...Although traditionally a Chinese holiday, the Lunar New Year is observed all over the world . We wanted to see what it looked like, so we teamed up with Flickr.

On the other hand, however, a number of countries — such as China, India and other emerging powers — have been expanding their influence through fast development in terms of global issues and diplomatic approaches. It is a new era, where every nation is engaged in tough competition with others in respect to their own national interests.

Joseph Nye coined the term "soft power," but he says that strategy alone is no longer enough. In The Future of Power, Nye explains that in the global information age, superpowers need a "smart power" strategy — the hard power of coercion and payment, plus the soft power of persuasion and attraction.

In a sign of the importance that India is attaching to its ties with East and Southeast Asia, India hosted Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono at its Republic Day celebrations last week.