Alice Waters' celebrated Berkeley restaurant, Chez Panisse, was transported to Beijing last week as part of a four-day U.S.-China Forum on the Arts and Culture. Berkeley and Beijing don't have much in common...But to replicate the Berkeley experience in Beijing? It wasn't just a matter of flying the ingredients from California. Waters' philosophy centers on eating local and buying directly from the farm.

The American Corner...was assembled by the American Embassy here and is an example, writ small, of the sort of cultural programs — “soft power,” in the diplomatic nomenclature — that the State Department will emphasize after the last troops leave. Even in this arena of cultural and educational links, United States diplomats say they hope to gain leverage over Iran.

SA HAS learnt the hard way that playing a prominent role in global affairs does not come cheap...The department’s spokesman, Clayson Monyela, said yesterday that "public diplomacy and protocol have been elevated to full- fledged branches with additional staff, hence the rise in costs during this financial year".

Chinese film industry insiders have concluded that Chinese movies are facing three major problems in their attempts to gain worldwide recognition. As one of the major forces within China's cultural industry, the quality and output of movies are considered an important manifestation of the soft power and influence of national culture.

Many Chinese are fascinated by the United States, and it remains a top destination for China’s young people to study. Some American programs do send musicians or speakers to China and invite Chinese opinion makers to see the United States firsthand. But the four-day U.S.-China Forum event highlighted how unusual it was for the United States to provide broad access to American culture beyond pirated Hollywood movies.

Before public diplomacy, there was propaganda, a term coined by Pope Gregory XV in 1622 when he founded a new college to train missionaries to be sent to Protestant Northern Europe, Asia, and the New World. In this context, it is often noted that the Pope’s intention in making his new congregation responsible for ‘propaganda fide’-literally, propagating the faith-was not to endorse a shared information policy based on deceitful practices. Rather, the connotation of this first use of the term ‘propaganda,’ and its meaning until the twentieth century, was a value-neutral one.

A principal reason that few recognize Mexico’s current and potential strengths is that the nation has done a poor job in defining itself through public diplomacy. Mexico has excellent academic institutions, think tanks, and other organizations that could help the government craft an ambitious, comprehensive public diplomacy strategy.