With Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi currently on a three nation visit to May 19, all eyes will be on his time in China. His stops in South Korea and Mongolia will receive less attention.

India isn’t the only place where Narendra Modi is making front-page news. Two days into his tour of China, the country’s closely monitored media can’t seem to get enough of the Indian prime minister.

While dragons have been the symbol of imperial power for centuries in the Middle Kingdom, its government prefers to use the cuddly panda as a diplomatic gift to project its softer side. The dragon-to-panda transformation is a carefully thought-out image makeover by China’s top leadership: with their rising global power, they understand the need to reassure the world that they are a force for good, more like the panda than the dragon

Recent years have brought many prominent examples of political mobilization online, but most future growth in Internet users will come in countries with repressive and authoritarian regimes. Some democracies are attempting to mobilize soft power to reinforce real security concerns about less-than-friendly regimes around the world, and especially in Asia.

Buddhism and yoga will form part of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s soft power diplomacy as he visits China today and tries to increase his nation’s influence in the world’s second-largest economy. Modi, who heads a 50-strong delegation, arrived in the ancient city of Xian – the home town of President Xi Jinping – this morning at the start of a three-day trip.

Overseas aid was cut from $5.03 billion in 2014-15, to $4.05 billion in 2015-16, a reduction of around 20 per cent. Further cuts are scheduled to follow until 2017-18, by which time Australia's aid budget relative to gross national income will have sunk to 0.21 percent, its lowest level since overseas assistance was formalised in the post-war period. It will also be substantially below what Australia's more prosperous OECD partners allocate.

In what will be the first book to look at all of Tagore's travels internationally - his politics of friendship and practise of liberal humanism, scholars will gather in Edinburgh on May 12 to reveal to the world how the Indian Nobel laureate was perceived globally. 

Yep, the Azeris have oil... huge amounts of the stuff, so much so that the country is the ugly guy made good who’s suddenly never lonely. And Azerbaijan likes it, to the extent it wants to re-brand itself as a cultural, social and economic hot-spot rather than some backwater parked next to the Caspian Sea. And sport is a perfect branding opportunity.