Much debate has followed since Joseph Nye defined soft power in the 1990s as “the ability to get what you want through attraction rather than through coercion.” Realists usually consider soft power a consequence of the hard one – the kind that comes from missiles and economic strength – while others see it as a smarter, complementary way to ensure that national goals are achieved.

At the end of this year, New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art will present a major survey—“Ink Art: Past as Present in Contemporary China” (10 December-6 April 2014). Meanwhile, in Hong Kong, the planned M+ museum is seeking a specialist contemporary ink curator. Hong Kong, in fact, has been the cradle of the new ink movement since the mid-20th century.

Russia is more or less liked in China, Chile and Ghana, of all places. The Chinese seem to be getting used to their newly acquired status as a (nearly) global power. Their view of their northern neighbor is mellowing as the scale of comparison of the two countries’ economic and military might increasingly tilts toward Beijing. In Chile (as in many other Latin American countries) Russia is still seen as an inheritor of the Soviet Union’s anti-US mantle.

It is not hard to outshine the West in Africa, given the horrifying record of Western nations there. As I have documented in my Monitor article “The Ravaging of Africa” (October 2002) and the radio documentary of the same title (2007), U.S. imperial strategy towards Africa has devastated the continent.

So it's not that just by teaching in English you completely cut off French as a language. On the contrary, you get more people interested in France, more people interested in the ideas that French intellectuals have," he says. "They get passionate about the place. And so France carries on living in their imaginations when they've left France again." That, says Gumbel, is the very definition of soft power.

The most forward-looking companies increasingly use their own "smart power" partnerships with international development agencies and NGOs as a way of opening markets. While a country uses smart power when it intelligently combines hard military power with soft...

A Japanese contemporary art exhibition themed ‘Yayoi Kusama- Obsessions’ will be held at the Japan Foundation Center for Cultural Exchange in Hanoi from May 25-July 28 to mark Japan-Vietnam Friendship Year 2013.

People's opinions of the UK have improved markedly since 2012. That suggestion is based on a BBC World Service survey of more than 26,000 global citizens, whose positive views pushed the UK into third place, behind Germany and Canada.