For millions of Chinese, the U.S. pavilion’s show at the Shanghai World Expo will be the closest they’ll ever come to an experience of America. What they’ll get — apart from long waits — is a warm welcome, a dose of Hollywood-style entertainment and, in May, an impression of San Antonio.

A Chinese embroidery show opened in the Turkish capital Ankara on Thursday, with 60 masterpieces offering visitors a peek into this ancient art. The works, which fall into the more than 2,000-year-old Suzhou embroidery category, demonstrate such various styles as single-sided, double-sided, flat, crisscross and cut silk.

Fu Ying is a rare specimen in the ranks of Chinese diplomacy. She is female, she comes from an ethnic minority. She is set to take up a new post in Beijing as only the second female vice-foreign minister since the founding of the People's Republic in 1949.

Not exactly known for being in touch with the best needs of its people, Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe's Zanu-PF party was yesterday nonetheless fulsome in its praise for China's role in Africa.

Cooperation between China and India can curtail biodiversity loss, mitigate climate change and reduce deforestation, especially in the Himalayas, the mountain chain that stretches between the Indus and Brahmaputra River valleys.

Chinese diplomacy generally comes in all sizes and shapes, but until relatively recently the size was small and the shape a question mark. Decades of international isolation did little to nudge many nuances into its foreign policy.

It was an American — Harvard dean Joseph Nye — who coined the term "soft power," but the Chinese have taken the concept to a whole new level. More recently, however, China has taken a different path, with its public persona seeming to become more shrill, even arrogant.

Amid a pre-event torrent of child-friendly animations of China's upcoming world's fair —expected to draw 70 million visitors—and images of the Expo's fingerless blue mascot, called Haibao, Israel's seashell-shaped pavilion has garnered more than its share of attention.