One concerning aspect of China’s rising prominence is its troublesome relations with its neighbours. It has fought both real and legal battles on territorial and ideological grounds on several fronts including in India, Vietnam and on the Korean peninsula in the past [...] But one break in this pattern is the country’s long-standing relationship with Nepal.

The political agency of sports is often downplayed in popular conversation, if not totally ruled out. [...] Championing the team aspect of sports culture, athletic organizations have historically found a political voice against discrimination. Most recently, North Carolina’s sports teams have directed their energy against the state’s recent homophobic legislation.

China’s “One Belt One Road” initiative clearly reads as an audacious vision for transforming the political and economic landscapes of Eurasia and Africa over the coming decades via a network of infrastructure partnerships across the energy, telecommunications, logistics, law, IT, and transportation sectors. 

The first overseas Confucius Institute (CI) was set up in South Korea in 2004. It is a non-profit educational organisation dedicated to the promotion of the Chinese language (Mandarin) and culture. And because their modus operandi is to operate within learning institutions, there are continued criticisms from encroaching on academic freedom to even espionage.

Kuwait is one of the masters of soft power in the Middle East. As I was having dinner with two Emiratis, two non- Kuwaiti Arabs were having dinner at a table beside ours; the two non-Kuwaiti Arabs were stuck to one phone watching the second episode of “Swar Shuaib,” Kuwait’s Shuaib Rashed’s popular talk show. 

The culture and education organization of the Yunus Emre Institute has laid out a 15-article road map for its 2023 goals during a recent advisory meeting in Ankara. The meeting [...] set forth that the institute will strive to establish 55 centers on five continents by 2017 in efforts to strengthen communicative ties with the international community. 

Taiwan is in the middle of an enormous national effort to promote its soft power, aiming both to improve and enrich society and at the same time stimulate growth in an era when it has lost many of the industries that drove the economy during the past 50 years as one of Asia’s original tigers.

President Obama starts his first full day in Cuba on Monday in the Plaza of the Revolution, where Fidel Castro once delivered stem-winding speeches denouncing U.S. imperialism. Obama’s presence there, to lay a wreath at the monument to 19th century Cuban independence hero José Martí, underscores the remarkable nature of his visit.