To those pulling out their tin foil hats and claiming that Sony managed to pull one over on the planet by manufacturing this whole scandal – just remember that the thing about soft power is that you can’t always control how it goes down.

Speaking to foreign diplomats at the ‘end of the year’ reception recently in Suva, the Hon. Minister for Foreign Affairs, Ratu Inoke Kubuabola said he looked forward to working in close cooperation and partnership with the foreign envoys

Like the Chinese title 'Silk Road and the Great Wall,' the Silk Road' symbolizes the country's soft power, while the Great Wall represents the country's hard power. National prosperity must be achieved on the basis of supreme integration of hard and soft power.

How can democracies fight this ideology? People may die, but ideologies are forever. I suggest that we begin to think of the Islamic State as having soft power but with its own evil spin.

One extra benefit of working in the humanitarian sector after a major disaster is that by treating the sick and the injured, we can do more than help survivors - we can also enhance the image of our own country overseas.

As the numbers have grown, so too has the concern of Western academics who believe the project presents a serious threat to freedom of thought and speech in education.

Representatives from the Chinese and Thai governments signed bilateral agreements worth more than 62 billion yuan. The trade and development accords are yet another instance of Beijing engaging in a soft power approach to diplomacy with its Southeast Asian neighbors.

Three fundamental and one extraneous force are currently colliding in our region. Each of these forces has its own agenda and because none of them is truly dominant, the end result is a clash rather than competition.