China will enhance its cultural soft power in the 2011-2015 period, according to a document of the Communist Party of China (CPC) issued Wednesday. ...A public culture service system should be basically established with the emphasis in grassroots rural areas and central and western regions, it said.

Historian and diplomat Joseph Nye gives us the 30,000-foot view of the shifts in power between China and the US, and the global implications as economic, political and "soft" power shifts and moves around the globe.

Faced with dropping enrollment and revenue, the high school in this remote Maine town has fixed on an unlikely source of salvation: Chinese teenagers. Never mind that Millinocket is an hour’s drive from the nearest mall or movie theater, or that it gets an average 93 inches of snow a year.

More than 190 countries and 50 organizations are represented at the event, which has had at least 52 million visitors thus far. Of those 52 million, there are roughly 160 American college students working at the U.S. pavilion in the Student Ambassadors Program run by the University of Southern California. The event runs through the end of October.

Recently China has been ramping up its efforts at soft power. Last July Xinhua announced that it would launch a 24 hour English language channel and in 2009 China Central Television (CCTV) launched an Arabic channel. Even the private sector is getting into the act and Blue Ocean Network, China's first privately-owned English language TV network targeted at overseas audiences was launched in 2009.

Branding China as a free rider on the international order not only affects China's relations with the West, but also has strongly negative effects on China's international image.
Fighting this argument is a huge public diplomacy problem for China.

As an ancient civilization that has lasted five thousand years, the Chinese civilization has learned a profound lesson by witnessing the ups and downs of other cultures. The lesson is that a culture can be better sustained through openness and become stronger by including diversified external influences.

The Shanghai World Expo is a great investment in education for all citizens, has achieved great success and greatly improves China's soft power, said Serge Abou, E.U. Ambassador to China, when interviewed by reporters for China News Service recently.