Sport is a gigantic and powerful medium for the international spread of information, reputations and relationships that are the essence of public diplomacy. The money spent world-wide on sport dwarfs what any government spends on public diplomacy. The size of the global audiences for sport and the audience’s level of interest exceed those of any other subject matter, including political news and the movies. The nature of sport—in its human striving for excellence and in its competition, its winners and losers—carries its own messages.

...the project shows the scale and ambition behind China's push to revitalize red tourism. For years, the industry has been dominated by sleepy tours of leaders' homes and historical sites. That's changing. Red tourism is a big business. Between 2004 and '10, a total of 1.35 billion people have gone on red tours...However, the red-tourism market depends heavily on government-sponsored group tours

Using music and culture as diplomatic tools to bring people together and foster mutual understanding, The Rhythm Road: American Music Abroad is the premier 21st Century showcase of traditional American musical forms. To date, 155 musicians from 40 ensembles have toured with The Rhythm Road: American Music Abroad program visiting more than 100 countries on five continents.

Culture Kitchen is a new Bay Area-based culinary school where women share their family recipes and insight into their cultural backgrounds. By exploring these access points in an intimate, hands-on setting, Sturges and Lopez think they can create valuable exchanges and interactions between different ethnic backgrounds.

DreamWorks Animation has become the second Hollywood studio to enter into a distribution agreement with China's top online video site, Youku.com. Youku said Monday that it had signed a deal with the Glendale-based animation studio to distribute the "Kung Fu Panda" movies in China, marking the first time that DreamWorks releases have been made available in that country through the Internet.

Taiwan has been a relatively quiet player in the tense dispute about territorial claims in the South China Sea. That could change with an unusual initiative that Taipei says is a peaceful approach to asserting its sovereignty in a body of water where China, Vietnam, the Philippines, Malaysia and Brunei also have claims. The plan involves tourists, rare turtles and a remote atoll.

An important asset that New Delhi has failed to exploit vis-à-vis its neighbours is its soft power. Sports, economy, Bollywood, education, infrastructure, healthcare, tourism, history and heritage — there is so much that can be used by the country to influence its neighbourhood.

New dialogue between the South Asian rivals calls for a new form of diplomacy, where top officials can go out, eat familiar cuisines and sit between the very people whose fate they are negotiating. This would give them a feel of how welcoming and hospitable one neighbour can be to another.