The opening of Confucius Institutes this week in New York and Washington brings a key part of China's "soft power" initiative to the United States. On Tuesday, administrators at Columbia University will cut the ribbon to inaugurate the Confucius Institute at the Ivy League school in Manhattan. A day later, it will be George Washington University that does the honors, on a campus within walking distance of the US State Department and blocks away from the White House and Capitol Hill.

Zhao Qizheng, former chairman of the foreign affairs committee of China's top political advisory body, said we tended to speak too much "philosophy" and principles when foreign exchanges. Actually, telling Chinese stories can touch people and Chinese features lie in the stories. Zhao make the remarks during the sub-session of the Boao Forum for Asia, Boao dialogue: public diplomacy and intercultural communication, in Boao, south China's Hainan province on Sunday.

One of the key (but less remarked-upon) recommendations in Alex Oliver's policy brief The Consular Conundrum relates to the managing of public expectations for consular services, something New Zealand's MFAT – like DFAT and its political masters – has struggled to do.

The Foreign Minister and I, as he mentioned, did indeed talk about Syria. And I thanked the Foreign Minister for the constant pressure that the Government of Turkey has placed on the Assad regime, which, as we both have said repeatedly, must go. Turkey has also been incredibly generous to the refugees of this crisis, and they have taken them in by the thousands, kept their borders open, done everything possible to try to respond to that increasing humanitarian crisis.

Relations between the two countries, once strong allies, have been in tatters since May 2010, when Israeli troops raided a flotilla of ships carrying aid from Turkey to Gaza. The raid killed nine Turkish citizens and prompted the Turkish government to expel its Israeli ambassador and recall its own from Israel. The countries’ two powerful militaries, once close partners, began to regard each other as hostile forces, and lucrative trade dried up. Even the number of Israeli tourists to Turkey, who once flocked there, dwindled amid fears that the country was no longer safe for travel.

It may take a few years before the Chinese fully understand soft power. Soft power, as a concept, has been widely discussed in China, the understanding of which mainly comes from the explanation of the man who first outlined it, American scholar Joseph Nye, and observations of US soft power. But China may adopt a different means to developing soft power.

Chinese President Xi Jinping has delivered a keynote speech at the opening ceremony of the Boao Forum for Asia 2013 in the coastal town of Boao, in China's Hainan Province. President Xi expressed his wish to work with regional leaders to build a better future for Asia and the world.

Now that the dust has settled on President Barack Obama’s much-anticipated trip to Israel, it is possible to analyse the significance of the visit. The trip — the first foreign visit of his second term — carries important implications for US foreign policy. Rather than providing the breakthrough for which many had hoped, it demonstrated that Obama — unlike other second-term US presidents, who have staked their legacies on foreign policy — is interested primarily in securing a domestic legacy.