There used to be a saying about the Chinese: “They work while we sleep.” In the field of public diplomacy, it is absolutely spot on...Thankfully, the House Foreign Affairs Committee is determined to expose the Chinese public diplomacy offensive. Hearings on “Public Diplomacy with China” will be held by the Foreign Affairs Committee at 2:30 pm Wednesday.

It is a message designed to entertain and to engage a particular audience: those without much knowledge of history and not particularly interested in current events but who can be easily reached by new media and easily counted in audience surveys.

South Korea has successfully individualized itself in Asia by forming a mainstream culture that has increasingly isomorphic qualities in the Eastern Hemisphere. This also coincides with the government’s public diplomacy strategy of successfully promoting Korea as a brand.

Yesterday, there was a tweet that a senior official at the State Department described public diplomacy as like “old-school American propaganda.”  This resonated with many because it seemed to affirm a discrimination at State against public diplomacy and bureaucratic cannibalism.

It was a sign of how hard it can be to foresee the advantages of new technologies, but also the cultural resistance they face in traditional organisations. More than 100 years later, here in Australia, our Foreign Ministry is grappling with the latest wave of technological innovation, and so far it has been a very tough struggle.

In the United States, diplomats are transforming the way they work using social media, and, according to a report released today by the Lowy Institute, the contrast with Australia is huge. The US State Department now has 600 social media platforms with a global audience of more than 8 million people.