China tried to woo India by playing old Bollywood songs and serving vegetarian food for President Pratibha Devisingh Patil during the state banquet hosted in her honour by her Chinese counterpart, Hu Jintao here on Thursday.

Since 2004, Confucius Institutes have spread around the world, with almost 300 now existing in North America, South America, Europe, Asia, Africa and Oceania, in addition to an online and a radio-based Confucius Institute. Confucius Institutes are a core component of China's soft power strategy, or campaign to increase its influence and accomplish its goals through the appeal of its language and culture.

It was one of the biggest-ever gatherings of cabinet-level American officials in China. Some 200 Americans, including the secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, and the treasury secretary, Timothy Geithner, took part in the “Strategic and Economic Dialogue” on May 24th and 25th. The dialogue was launched in Washington last July as an annual chance to ensure that the wide range of bureaucracies involved in the relationship work in harmony.

The U.S. pavilion finally got built after a determined push by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton..."Establishing an American presence at this Expo worthy of our great country was quite a journey," she told an audience of U.S. corporate sponsors who had ponied up $61 million in a last-minute private fund-raising drive to build the pavilion.Having spent a day talking to Chinese visitors at the U.S. exhibit, I think the journey was worthwhile.

As China has grown into a major economic and military power in the last two decades, its mad scramble for energy resources and trading partners has led it into alliances with some of the world's most unsavory governments. Here are five regimes that couldn't survive without Beijing.

The Obama administration expects China to join in the international criticism of North Korea for the sinking of a South Korean warship. After U.S.-China discussions this week in Beijing, senior American officials say China will carefully move closer to South Korea's position that the North must be held accountable for the torpedo attack in March.

President Pratibha Patil today arrived here to a red carpet welcome as the first Indian Headof the State to visit China in a decade for visit during which she will meet the top Chinese leadership and sign a number of agreements.

Beijing China and the US agreed to expand their students exchange programme to facilitate one lakh American students to study in this country and increase the number of Chinese doing research in the US over the next four years.