The two countries should expand cultural and people-to-people exchanges so as to consolidate the foundation of their friendship. He said they should make full use of the Confucius Institute and the Chinese culture center in Bangkok to further enhance cooperation in areas including culture, education, tourism and youth exchanges.

Taken as a whole, one can surmise that despite acknowledging the 'Asian Century' we are not properly prepared for it. Our recent leaders faced and continue to face obstacles to their soft power producing real world positive results.

At USC on April 6, the Association of Public Diplomacy Scholars held a conference on the Future of Public Diplomacy. Experts, academics, and practitioners gathered to discuss what lies ahead for the field of public diplomacy. There were a couple of major takeaways from the conference.

The Empowering Women and Girls Through Sports Initiative builds on Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton’s vision of “smart power,” which embraces the use of a full range of diplomatic tools – in this case, the game of soccer – to bring people together and foster understanding.

Tthe US Peace Corps is reopening operations in Tunisia. The first group of volunteers is scheduled to arrive this year and their assignments will focus on English language training and youth skills development in order to help prepare Tunisian students and professionals for future employment.

Five months ago Sweden went viral on the social web through its initiative Curators of Sweden. A new Swede takes over the country's official Twitter account @sweden every week to share anything Swedish...the initiative is regarded a global success

The Department of State is well on the way to meeting the President’s goals of increasing visitor visa processing capacity in China and Brazil by 40 percent in 2012...The State Department is committed to facilitating travel to the United States as part of broader “Jobs Diplomacy” goals. Visas for legitimate travelers are an important tool to help accelerate America’s economic revival.