According to Martha Bayles, a professor of humanities at Boston College, public diplomacy has disappeared. Her new book is “Through a Screen Darkly: Popular Culture, Public Diplomacy, and America’s Image Abroad.”

On a  sultry afternoon in the city when the rest of the Kolkatans were busy with their routine tasks, a small crowd cheered throughout the performance by hip- hop artists Next Level at the American Center. The performers from the US entertained the audience along with local hip-hop enthusiasts and dancers. Next level programme is an initiative sponsored by the US Department of State's Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs in association with the University of North Carolina's Department of Music.

South Korea and China will hold a joint public diplomacy forum in Beijing next week to discuss ways to step up bilateral exchange in non-political sectors, a foreign ministry official here said Thursday.

This U.S. leadership in cultural diplomacy is now decaying, in part because international partnership programs are on the fiscal chopping block. For example, the Fulbright scholarship, the United States’ flagship international exchange program, is facing more than $30 million in congressional budget cuts.

Taiwan has launched a new program in which students and young professionals from the United States will visit Taiwan to learn more about the country through engaging with their Taiwanese counterparts and meeting government officials, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said Tuesday.

India shares traditionally warm ties with Afghanistan. After shunning Afghanistan during the Taliban regime, India become a friend and a strategic partner to the Afghan government. Indian culture, including Bollywood, as its film industry is known, is hugely popular in Afghanistan and India sees an opportunity to win economic influence, boost security, and gain a trade link to Central Asia through Afghanistan.

Protesters demonstrating against the military, which seized power in last month's coup d'état, have been spotted invoking the three-fingered salute used by the oppressed population in the films of Suzanne Collins's young adult science-fiction series.  In the wake of international news channels such as CNN and the BBC being taken off air, as well as HBO and the Disney Channel, it is especially significant that this small but pointed gesture of protest should have sprung from popular culture.

The China Institute will hold its annual gala today, celebrating the 88th year since its founding in 1926 and making it the oldest US-China cultural organization in the United States.  The China Institute in Manhattan was established by American and Chinese educators, including John Dewey, Hu Shih, president of Peking University and China's ambassador to the US, and Kuo Pingwen, founder of the National Southeastern University in China.