“New media enriches the style of diplomatic language, enhances innovation in discourse and displays a close-to-the-people diplomatic manner. It is a manifestation of people-oriented diplomacy”, the micro blog’s operations director, Gong Yufeng, said at the Media Salon conference organized by Renmin.com last month.

Australia and the US have previously expressed concern at China resorting to chequebook diplomacy but Carr appeared to soften Canberra's stance in an interview with the Australian Financial Review. He urged the region to learn to live with Beijing "developing all the accoutrements of a major power".

And now that she’s plugging a new program co-sponsored by our nation’s travel and tourism industry and the U.S. government, I’ll just go ahead and say it right out: “I love the way Rosanne Carter sings “Land of Dreams,” both for the pure joy she conveys in her music and the power of the message contained in the song.

The strength of Taiwan's soft power lies in the country's ability to combine both these aspects, Lung said during a live interview on Voice of America (VOA), part of the itinerary of a two-week tour of the United States, her first visit to the U.S. since assuming the post in February.

Kazuo Korenaga, executive director of the Japan-Korea Economic Association in Tokyo, a group that seeks to promote business and cultural exchange between the two countries, said that, “Politics should be politics, the economy should be the economy. Economic sectors, including the treatment of South Korean stars in the Korean boom, should not be influenced by this issue.”

The venue was the United Nations, and the artwork—the winning submissions displayed by secondary school students of T&T, was entitled A Showcase of Cultural Diplomacy...Ambassador Eden Charles praised the initiative as “innovative” and “a reminder of the importance of culture in bridging gaps,” between nations.

Taiwan’s cultural power lies in its incorporation of features of Chinese tradition and modern Western society, ROC Culture Minister Lung Ying-tai said. Today’s Taiwan has moderated the authoritarian part of Chinese culture through maintenance of traditional gentleness and generosity, along with the assimilation of an open, law-abiding civil society.

Recent conflicts in North Africa have demonstrated Europe's capacity and willingness to project military power, and these build on a growing European tendency toward consolidation of hard power. The UK and France have put aside historical enmities to develop an ever-closer defense relationship, and over time this tendency will only increase.