India has found a new gateway to project its Africa diplomacy as it explores a partnership with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation which is engaged in a range of activities in the emerging continent. This possibility of collaborating in Africa emerged from talks between External Affairs Minister S.M. Krishna and Microsoft founder Bill Gates here Thursday.

In the current political climate, overt Chinese-ness is simply a competitive disadvantage for Chinese brands overseas, according to Jerry Clode, associate director of cultural insight for Added Value. Perhaps Chinese brands with global aspirations can look to post-war Japan for role models.

Confronted with the shortcomings of international political processes many scholars and diplomats have frequently turned to the non-governmental sphere in search of more practical action on global challenges. It is not uncommon to find today calls for global civil society engagement, public-private partnerships, and citizen diplomacy in almost all contexts of international relations.

SHANGHAI --- Zhao Qizeng, China’s leading proponent of public diplomacy, wrote, “Culture is the soul and life of a nation.” That concept is the driving force behind much of China’s exercise of soft power, and other countries that deal with this superpower need to understand the value the Chinese place on their language, traditions, and other cultural elements of their national life.

SHANGHAI --- Zhao Qizeng, China’s leading proponent of public diplomacy, wrote, “Culture is the soul and life of a nation.” That concept is the driving force behind much of China’s exercise of soft power, and other countries that deal with this superpower need to understand the value the Chinese place on their language, traditions, and other cultural elements of their national life.

As people in Santa Lucija, a village in the small island nation of Malta, look forward to its annual Chinese Film Festival this summer, the China Cultural Center in Malta has pledged to organize more cultural events this year to mark the 40th anniversary of diplomatic relations between the two countries. Santa Lucija, the only Maltese village with a partnership with Jinchang district of Suzhou city in east China, began to offer its citizens a feast for their eyes in 2007 when it organized a Chinese film festival at the end of the summer.

On May 30, the Center for Northeast Asian Policy Studies (CNAPS) at Brookings hosted a discussion examining the use of public diplomacy in Northeast Asia. Leading experts discussed the objectives, practices, opportunities and challenges in public diplomacy for China, Japan, South Korea and Taiwan.

Why did you join Twitter? .... I’m interested in the public diplomacy aspect of your job. I come to this job at a crucial juncture in the relationship between Israel and the United States. We face great challenges in getting our message across.