China International Broadcasting Network (CIBN), run by the state-owned radio station China Radio International, has recently been approved for establishment by the State Administration of Radio, Film and Television. This international new media broadcasting network will feature 61 languages and international characteristics.

Every so often, with about the same frequency as a combination hailstorm and solar eclipse, I get an op-ed published. In 2002 and 2007, The New York Times published my pieces about the need for autonomy in U.S. international broadcasting. On July 13, they published me again. The op-ed, "Radio Free of Bureaucracy" is about my other recurring theme: the need for consolidation in U.S. international broadcasting.

China Media Capital is supported by the Chinese government and will take controlling shares in the TV channels which Rupert Murdoch had hoped would deliver mass audiences. But Beijing has kept a tight rein on foreign media players, including the world's biggest.

It is a blow to Syria’s soft power as well as its fledgling entertainment industry. With an extremely small theater and cinema scene, the Muslim dramas are the country’s primary cultural export. They have sparked debate at home and are enormously popular across the whole Arab world, broadening Syria’s cultural reach.

A new Turkish cultural center joins airline flights and radio and television broadcasts in expanding the country's reach around the globe, with a UK office on the way and more planned for Moscow and Damascus.

American public diplomacy has been the subject of many reports and much discussion over the past few years. But one rarely examined element is the true impact of the Smith-Mundt Act of 1948, which for all practical purposes labels U.S. public diplomacy and government broadcasting as propaganda.

We may soon all become as familiar with the Chinese voice as we are with CNN and BBC. Last month one of China's largest state owned media, Xinhua News Agency, launched a 24-hour global English TV News channel. It's the strongest sign yet of China's determination to push its soft power and increase its influence worldwide.

An event to mark the launch of the TV documentary series "Walk into Israel – The Land of Milk and Honey," the first comprehensive TV series about the Jewish civilization and the State of Israel produced by CCTV, was held at the National Center for the Performing Arts in Beijing