From the wild popularity of such shows as “24” with super-agent Jack Bauer out to save the world, to the popular sequels of the end-of-the-world “Transformers” movie, American television series and movies have always played well in China.

Halfway through an otherwise coherent conversation with a Georgian lawyer last week—the topics included judges, the court system, the police—I was startled by a comment he made about his country’s former government, led by ex-president Mikheil Saakashvili. “They were LGBT,” he said, conspiratorially.   

Frameworks for cultural diplomacy in the U.S. are often too narrow and too broad. On the one hand, self-identified practitioners of cultural diplomacy – within and outside government – tend to identify, if somewhat generically, specific exportable forms of expressive culture (think: music, theater, literature, dance, murals, or film).

First lady, Michelle Obama is currently visiting China with her daughters, Sasha and Malia and her mother, Marian Robinson. The trip marks the first ever made by a first lady to China without her husband in tow. Mrs. Obama is there to promote educational exchanges between the U.S. and China but she has also subtly been addressing the issue of freedom of expression.

The Sochi Winter Olympic and Paralympic Games have ended. The opening ceremony for the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games is still more than six years away. As the Tokyo Organizing Committee is forming, this seems like an appropriate moment to think about Tokyo in terms of the recent Sochi experience.