China’s soft power has also been ascendant in Africa. [...] China is leveraging its soft power — culture, investment, academia, foreign aid, public diplomacy — more effectively than before to influence Africa and other regions in the developing world.

A statue of Vladimir Lenin in Odessa, Ukraine, has been refashioned into Darth Vader. A Ukrainian artist, Alexander Milov [...] transformed the statue in response to recent decommunization laws, which require the removal of Communist symbols in Ukraine [...] “I wanted to make a symbol of American pop culture which appears to be more durable than the Soviet ideal,” Mr. Milov told the BBC.

Because for all the talk of the new Chinese strength and legitimising its position on the world stage, there are still plenty of economic and social weaknesses for the country to address back home. [...] This is where Britain’s new pro-Chinese attitude assumes what President Xi’s official press release terms “visionary” proportions.

But digital diplomacy is not the same as digital outreach, and it is not limited to Facebook. My focus in this debate has been on the need for DFAT to develop and exploit online influence, not to critique its online reach. I agree with DFAT's own definition that diplomacy is less about popularity and more about persuasion. Australia's ability to use digital tools to persuade or influence populations was not assessed in the Portland report.

At face value, Qatar’s engagement with the world is impressive. Doha has not only cultivated a strong alliance with the United States as the host of U.S. Central Command (USCENTCOM) and extended overtures to Israel, but until recently the tiny emirate truly also competed with its larger neighbor—the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia—for a dominant role in the Sunni Arab world.

Piracy, the scourge of Hollywood, may have become one of America's powerful diplomatic tools – is it the new propaganda? [...] "The last thing they think is that it [pirated movies] represents a tool of cultural diplomacy, involving a foreign culture or government, and that its illegality could even make this mainstream fare more alluring than originally planned.”