A group of Polish musicians and artists has held an exhibition in Beijing as part of a cultural exchange. The tour is part of a national-level initiative between China and Poland, that stretches from 2016 to 2019. The group will visit 6 cities in China.

Wushu's global sporting popularity pales before karate, judo and taekwondo, but state media reported this month that a "Wushu Cultural Industry Investment Fund" worth $7 billion has been set up to run tournaments and promote it at home and abroad. [...] The Chinese government's development plan for the sport from 2016-2020 says that its aims include "increasing national confidence and boosting national cultural soft power".

Young Chinese, including those in Hong Kong, must learn from history if they truly want to make the world a better place, says the founder of Shanghai’s first “comfort women” museum that opened at the weekend. “It’s always important to learn from history,” said Professor Su Zhiliang of Shanghai Normal University, who spent more than two decades researching the issue of comfort women 

Greater cultural exchange between Mexico and China allows to build "closer, brotherly and lasting ties", said Diego Prieto, director general of Mexico's National Institute of Anthropology and History. The federal official highlighted that a series of academic, scientific, artistic and literary exchanges in recent years had allowed commercial and economic relations to blossom in parallel.

This month, the Chinese government plans to introduce codes for some 3,000 Chinese characters as part of a grand project, known as the China Font Bank, to digitize 500,000 characters previously unavailable in electronic form. Until now, only 80,388 characters have been encoded in the international computing standard, Unicode.

So as not to miss any stitches in the fabric of international relations, leaders attach extra importance to what they wear during diplomatic talks, adhering to the unspoken rules of what is known as ‘fashion diplomacy'. [...] Would you be surprised, if I claimed that the dress the Queen was wearing during a State Banquet was more telling in terms of diplomacy than other political procedures? ​

Because of the United States’ predominant role in geopolitics and global economics, foreign governments and their citizens scrutinize the candidates and their positions, which can hint at future American policies. The campaign also acts as a snapshot of American democracy. According to political scientist Joseph Nye, America’s soft power – its ability to persuade foreign leaders and exert influence abroad – partly depends on how the rest of world interprets our political process, values and outcomes.

China has 128,000 poor villages with 55.75 million registered poor people. There is no one-size-fits-all solution to lift them out of poverty. Typically, people fall into four categories of poverty, requiring different approaches. Unlike some development players, NGOs are more agile and are innovative in solutions, allowing them to provide support sooner.