china

March 17, 2010

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.

The figures confirm the exponential growth in commercial ties between the two countries, which were almost non-existent 15 years ago, when trade volumes amounted to just 400 million dollars.

For millions of Chinese, the USA 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 and a dose of Hollywood-style entertainment.

The closure of Google.cn will damage China, from discrediting its soft power campaign to rattling foreign businesses to upsetting a key constituency of educated and white-collar Chinese. Google is naive if they think they can close or force the closure of Google.cn and still retain any sort of a positive relationship with the Chinese government.

The Indian government has taken a leaf out of Chinese diplomacy — the great dragon has been teaching Chinese language in India for years — and has launched the first course of Hindi-to-Chinese at the Indian embassy's cultural centre in Beijing.

The USC Center on Public Diplomacy use the construct of “brand experience” to explore and examine how countries pursue nation branding at Expo Shanghai and how Chinese visitors experience the branded country pavilions.

In an exclusive interview with China Daily in the Great Hall of the People, the chairman of the foreign affairs committee of the National Committee of CPPCC, said governmental diplomacy and public diplomacy are mutually complementary.

The United States is studying whether it can legally challenge Chinese Internet restrictions that hurt Google and other U.S. companies operating in China, but direct talks with Beijing might yield faster results, the top U.S. trade official said on Tuesday.

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