A week ago, the chef to the French President was serving François Hollande, as he does regularly. But tonight in Washington DC, he’s a guest, serving himself at a buffet line of high-end American comfort food: fried chicken, collard greens, fresh corn and tomato salad. Off duty and dressed neatly in a polo shirt and slacks, he places a piece of fried chicken on his own plate, then picks up another in the tongs, and with a gracious nod, places a crispy drumstick on the plate of the person behind him in line.

Raising the ante in the confrontation with the Assad regime and its international supporters, French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius this week called for the use of force in Syria. Across the Rhine Valley in Berlin, however, his German equivalent Guido Westerwelle urged caution: "Before speaking of consequences we must first have clarification." French daily newspaper Le Monde ran the outsized headline "Toxic Gas Massacre in Damascus". Most German newspapers that day led with the Bradley Manning verdict.

In 2025, France will have no unemployment, no debt, and tapping the housing market will be a "pleasant" experience - a tleast according to four of its government ministers. The finding came after France's president, Francois Hollande, asked his ministers to present their "holiday homework" on Monday, which was an essay entitled "What is your vision of France in 2025?" Happily for Hollande, the general tone of the homework suggested everything will be just grand in 2025.

Before I moved to Paris three years ago, although I’d already been to the city and was lucky enough to call French my second language, I still held more than a few romantic preconceived notions. Every metropolis has a set of stereotypes linked to it, and Paris exists in many people's minds as a charming, luxurious, timeless hub of style and sophistication—in fact, so many people expect the City of Light to be what they want it to be that the reality has rendered some tourists physically sick with disappointment.

Chinese tourists may be flocking to Paris, but they are ignoring their own little piece of the City of Lights on the mainland. A small development called Tianducheng on the outskirts of Hangzhou is known within the country as China’s “little Paris.” It is complete with tree-lined plazas, stalls for quaint coffee shops and storefronts (mostly empty), and even an Eiffel Tower at one-third of full size. Some architectural experts have lauded the imitation, but five years after its construction, few Chinese residents have taken a shine to it.

De Gaulle and Free France’s use of public diplomacy to rally a down-yet-not-out France remains a stirring example of how a semi-official national movement can project legitimacy and rally support for its cause. Through leaflets, communiqués, and international broadcasting efforts, as well as by projecting the trappings of authority, Free France was able to use public diplomacy to rally support domestically and throughout the areas of the French territory worldwide still under contest, as well as to supporters in Britain and the United States.

China’s increasing dominance offers something of a surprise: It suggests that Colbert’s philosophy could actually work better than long believed. But it also offers a cautionary lesson for China, and perhaps an encouraging one for its Western rivals. The experience of France suggests that the most important resource of all—human capital—may be, paradoxically, very difficult for a centralized state to capture.

The Embassy of Malta and the Culture Diplomacy Fund in cooperation with The Malta Film Commission organized on the 17 of June 2013 an event entitled ‘CineMalte – les possibilités d’une Ile’. This was the first time ever that such a cultural activity promoting the Maltese cinematographic industry was held in Paris.