Abe advocates stronger diplomacy that includes significant revisions in Japan’s security policies. Not only does he want to allow the exercise of collective self-defense by Japan’s Self-Defense Forces (SDF), he wants to rename the SDF the National Defense Force (with the Japanese character for ‘Force’ changed to ‘Military’)

Recently, Beijing has launched what Joshua Kurlantzick deems a “charm offensive”- China’s rising soft power. In the quest for closer relations and natural resources, China has begun to transform the world balance of power.

Lobbying for foreign interests is a half billion dollar industry in the U.S. and nearly every country in the world devotes considerable resources to lobbying officials in Washington... In fact, just one lobbying firm, Patton Boggs, lobbies for nearly half of the world's population. And, one in every ten dollars spent on lobbying in the U.S. comes from foreign governments."

"China's rise" and the "US decline" have been hotly discussed among politicians and scholars. How does China's rise influence the US? Is the US really in decline? How will the Sino-US relationship develop in the future? Global Times reporter Wang Wen interviewed American political scientist Joseph Nye, former dean of the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University on these topics.

A recently unearthed video shows that President Obama has greatly shifted his views on how to address terrorism, advocating for a “soft power” approach in 2004, to employing drone strikes and targeted killing of terror suspect during his Presidency.

What is the American counter-move? The Obama administration devised a scheme for a proposed Trans-Pacific Partnership that would exclude China. This magical sleight of hand is grounded in the imaginations of American policy-makers but not in reality.