These videos are part of the series CPD Video Conversations: National Branding at Expo 2010 Shanghai.

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Ideas and good writing may be fun, good music can be soothing, the cinema and theater are certainly entertaining, and sports and video games are heart-racing. All that is good and well, and all are the flesh and blood of the soft power that many countries try to build and whose management the United States has possibly mastered.

While European leaders squabbled over the right kind of deficit reduction and whose country boasts the finest football side, Barack Obama used the recent G20 summit of leading economic powers in Toronto to make a different case: that the United States is dedicated to building a closer relationship with Asia.

Accompanied by a trade mission of over 30 senior executives and leading companies from South Africa’s mining, metals and capital equipment sectors, the first of four sectors to be profiled during the promotion, the delegation has arrived in Shanghai to introduce investment opportunities in South Africa, identify opportunities in China and enhance existing trading activities.

Delhi University, while realising the importance of an international exposure, is keen on casting its net wide. It has signed many MoUs with universities and colleges abroad for student and faculty exchange programmes.

Michaelle Jean did a little panda diplomacy yesterday in a bid to seal a deal that would see China send two Giant Pandas to Canada... China sends pandas only to its "friends," [Dr. Ming-Tat Cheung, chairman of the Panda Acquisition Task Force at the Toronto Zoo] said, and its "special friends" get a special price, too.

In one of his most significant policy addresses to date, Ma Ying-jeou, president of Taiwan, hailed his country's new Economic Cooperation Framework Agreement (ECFA) with China. Signed Tuesday, the ECFA is the most significant manifestation of a thaw in bilateral ties between Taipei and Beijing.