China has launched a drive to win "hearts and minds" in Africa just as western powers – including Britain and America – are cutting back on their spending on international broadcasting. In January China Central Television (CCTV) launched its first African hub in Nairobi.

On November 2, Xinhua News Agency issued its first digital interactive e-magazine in Arabic, called China Panorama. The new service will focus on in-depth financial reporting and will target Arab elites and professionals. Its aim is to provide a “better and deeper understanding of China and Chinese economy”. Xinhua will thus add another piece to its expanding media network, which already boasts 142 overseas branches.

Israel said the expanding Hamas media empire is part of the Islamists’ “terrorist operations,” although it stopped short of branding everyone working for it as a potential target in its offensive against Gaza’s Hamas rulers. Al-Aqsa TV, which employed the two journalists , said they were killed on the job, and it accused Israel of trying to silence those documenting the suffering of Gaza’s civilians.

“The bottom line is that Hamas is more relevant,” said Yoram Meital of Ben-Gurion University’s Chaim Herzog Center for Middle East Studies and Diplomacy. “Israel’s image is as the side that refused to pay the price for peace, and most Palestinians see Hamas’s ‘resistance’ as more attractive and up to date, and the Palestinian authority as somewhat not relevant.”

The Israeli government is trying to pre-empt a publicity pounding over its Gaza offensive by aggressively pushing out its version of events, furiously tweeting and Facebook posting updates from a "media bunker." The instant they heard about a bus bombing in Tel Aviv on Wednesday, scores of tech-savvy youth in Israel's government media command center in Jerusalem sprang into action.

President Barack Obama is underscoring the administration’s ‘strategic pivot’ to Asia with his current trip to the Pacific. This column has criticised this pivot and the botched public diplomacy campaign that managed to irritate friends, allies and, of course, China. The Pentagon attempted to minimise the PR damage, renaming the pivot “rebalancing”.

It is wrong to suggest Australia has to choose between the US alliance and collaborating with the Association of Southeast Asian Nations. We can do both, but the trick lies in how we manage that. Greater engagement with Southeast Asia would augment our relationship with the US and China.

Fifty Muslim students from the Social and Political School of University of Muhammadiyah Malang, East Java, visited the Indian Cultural Center in Denpasar on Tuesday as part of their study tour themed “Cultural Diplomacy for Peace”.