The Indonesian Embassy in Moscow will again host the Festival Indonesia this year as part of economic diplomacy efforts to promote superior products and the potential of Indonesia. [...] The Festival Indonesia this year to promote superior products of Indonesia will be enlivened by among other things, business forum, products exhibition, Indonesian arts and cultural performances, and information services on Indonesia.

Convergence — that is what Incredible India is seeking to bring into the increasingly digital campaigns to market the country to tourists. One of the objectives of the Incredible India 2.0 campaign is fostering engagement between Centre and state initiatives, as well as extensive collaborations with industry, to promote tourism. [...] The ministry is promoting a give-and-take approach. 

This week in Gwangju, we also see cultural diplomacy in action. "With support from the U.S. Embassy in Seoul, some 100 participants and their families and communities have come together with a team of dancers from Battery Dance, a New York-based contemporary dance company, to help build understanding and bridge divides." 

Under the 2025 Tourism Vision Plan, the country is expecting to increase the number of tourism arrivals from 4.8 million in 2014 to 20 million by 2025. “The Iranian government is making every effort to use this opportunity to widen its relations with other nations and to boost Iran’s national and international power as well.”

The exhibition not only gives a picture of the sociocultural development of Japan spread over centuries but also exhibits the aesthetic features of Japanese printing technology. The calendars reflect images from Japanese traditional and contemporary arts, sports, automobiles, nature and architecture in addition to showcasing a vibrant depiction of Japanese heritage and cultural identity. 

The story of China is well-known. China has achieved a remarkable economic growth lifting its country out of poverty. It presents itself as an economic model to the Global South, an alternative to one with liberal democratic political infrastructure. However, its rise on the world stage has not been supported by a commensurate positive national image.

While the world of business is increasingly connected and integrated on the global scale, the nationality of a brand at times attains growing political significance in today’s marketplace. Some argue that with globalization a brand’s nationality—its perceived national association—has become so tenuous that contemporary consumers may not care where a brand is from or even know the country-of-origin information of the brands they purchase.

When it comes to living in a democracy, Nato Thompson argues, nothing affects us more directly and more powerfully than culture. Culture suffuses the world we live in, from TV to music to advertising to sports. And all these things, Thompson writes in his new book, Culture as Weapon, “influence our emotions, our actions, and our very understanding of ourselves as citizens.”