Sinology conferences are usually lacklustre affairs where scholars talk about anything from burial rituals in the Han dynasty to Tang poetry. However, a recent European sinology conference in Portugal has turned into a completely scandalous event thanks to some Chinese officials.

If the United States hopes to maintain a level of influence in the world commensurate with its economic and military strength, it must modernize and dramatically improve some of its soft-power foreign policy tools. Many of those tools have proven ineffective, and fail to reflect the transformational changes in the past two decades prompted by technology, connectivity, and global markets.

Today, China faces two difficult options: On one hand, it can keep on pushing its territorial claims at the expense of regional stability and goodwill, appeasing nationalist elements back home. Alternatively, it can rein in hardline factions, sign up to a legally-binding Code of Conduct (CoC) in the West Philippine Sea, and emerge as a legitimate contender for regional leadership in the coming decades.

One of the nice things about being the most powerful person in the world is that people give you presents. It's unlikely that gifts from foreign countries do much to sway American diplomacy, but foreign visitors bestowing cumbersome or weird gifts is almost certainly one of the more entertaining parts of President Obama's job. 

Yu Hyun-seok, president of the Korea Foundation, deplores the reality of Korean public diplomacy, citing the government’s lack of recognition in the importance of and investment in U.S. think tanks that have growing significance. 

Korea and China have maintained a close relationship since 1992, when they reestablished diplomatic ties that had been severed after the Communists came to power in Beijing in 1949.  Historical and cultural bonds over two millennia underlie their ties, which are evolving into a more mature, substantive and multidimensional partnership based on their growing geopolitical and economic interdependence.

If this sounds like a national campaign, that's because it is. The South Korean government has made the Korean Wave the nation's No. 1 priority. Korea has multiple 5 year plans, the likes of which most democratic and capitalist countries have never seen. The government felt that spreading Korean culture worldwide was dependent on Internet ubiquity, so they subsidized Internet access for the poor, the elderly, and the disabled.

Qatar’s World Cup organizers view this ground as a blank canvas for a new era in the Middle East, a way to advance their society and use soft power—i.e., the world’s most popular sport—to promote the country’s foreign policy.