public diplomacy
Cross-cultural tensions on the American campus may still increase because...it’s fundamentally a clash of civilizations. Chinese and Americans have fundamentally different values, norms, and worldviews, and Chinese students on U.S. campuses is merely the first front of the inevitable struggle between the hegemon and its challenger.
Just as in relationships between people, states generally treat different categories of other states differently: With friends they appeal to loyalty and shared values; with allies they appeal mainly to shared interests; with clients or subordinates, they also appeal mainly to shared interests, but with a twist given the power equation.
Networks are becoming increasingly important, and positioning in social networks can be an important power resource. Coercion remains an important aspect of power in this global information age, but policy answers will often depend on the context of each market and its asymmetries of vulnerability.
"Aalu Anday" or "Potato and Eggs" starts innocently enough but soon launches into a tongue-in-cheek attack on the country's political establishment and its conservative, religious underpinnings. The song has not only made waves in Pakistan, but across the border in India, where the plight of Pakistan's beleaguered liberals has won a lot of sympathy.
The USC Center on Public Diplomacy was pleased to host Barry A. Sanders for a discussion of his new book, American Avatar: The United States in the Global Imagination.
The Central Committee has declared that focusing on China's cultural development is part of its plan to increase the country's "soft power" and defend its "cultural security." While the government continues to fund projects to promote Chinese culture abroad like the Confcius Institutes, behind these tired slogans are policy guidelines sure to doom any possibility of a Chinese cultural renaissance.
Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton announced that Ellen DeGeneres has been named as a Special Envoy for Global AIDS Awareness. In this role, Ms. DeGeneres will use her celebrity platform to raise awareness about the global fight against AIDS.
Click here to watch Ban Ki-moon’s talk, “Using New Data to Understand Emerging Vulnerability in Real Time” scheduled at 2:45pm (EST).