Chinese President Hu Jintao had a busy schedule from Tuesday to Thursday, meeting with U.S. leaders on major bilateral and world issues in Washington. His diplomacy in the United States, however, turned somewhat light-hearted as he walked into a Chicago high school on Friday morning.

What are your first thoughts about symbols of Chinese culture? The Great Wall, the Bird's Nest or Peking opera? A survey among 2,000 college students shows that Confucius, traditional Chinese medicine (TCM), and former chairman Mao Zedong broke into the top 10 Chinese cultural icons among the 270 candidates.

A direct connection to the world’s oldest continuous civilization now exists at UK. The Confucius Institute was inaugurated Saturday before a full crowd at the Singletary Center for the Arts.

India is considering introducing the teaching of Mandarin in state schools... According to Chinese diplomats, India responded tepidly to a proposal by Beijing to establish Confucius Institutes, which teach Chinese, in the country’s main centres of learning.

What does China stand for? That question arose at a recent dialogue between Confucian and African thinkers in South Africa funded by the Confucius Institute. Such dialogues are relatively new: They are carried out on non-Western terms and funded by non-Western organizations...But which values does China stand for and how can they be promoted abroad?

While tens of thousands of Chinese can sing the Russian song Katyusha, thousands of Russian families regularly watch a Chinese teaching TV program named "Hello, China."

Since the entry of the 21st century, public diplomacy in China has arrested a growing widespread attention with each passing day. The Chinese government has attached increasing importance to its role. So, public diplomacy and government diplomacy supplement each other, and they are pairing off wing to wing in China's diplomacy.

Despite its rich cultural resources, China has a relatively weak capacity of cultural transmission. Enhancing such capacity is a pragmatic approach to strengthen China's national cultural soft power. China should positively engage in international cultural exchange, and endeavor to build branches of the Confucius Institute all over the world.