With Xi Jinping's election as the new president, China has equalled the United States in a crucial area of soft power. For the first time, China will deploy its first lady, who happens to be a famous folk singer, to charm the world and build bridges.

China is now the world’s second-largest economy and the only plausible challenger to the US as dominant global superpower. So it is hard to disagree when David Shambaugh asserts that the country’s rise is “the big story of our era”. And yet, oddly enough, Professor Shambaugh’s China Goes Global is dedicated to proving that the rise of China is not such a big story, after all.

The U.N.-backed Alliance of Civilizations will strengthen its role through mediation and fostering of cultural understanding through sports, arts and music, the head of the initiative, which gives priority to defusing tensions between Western and Islamic worlds. “The Alliance can become a major soft power tool to diffuse tensions and conflicts, especially those which are ethnically or identity based,” the High-Representative for the Alliance, Nassir Abdulaziz Al-Nasser, told reporters at UN Headquarters in New York on Thursday, while outlining his priorities for this year.

President Xi, who has said achieving the "great revival of the Chinese nation" is the goal of his administration, is expected to pursue wealth- and military-building policies over his two five-year terms, aiming to transform China into a superpower on par with the United States. Backed by a strong military, China has been striving to become a "great maritime power." It is quite clear that the country will continue its hard-line stance against Japan, Vietnam, and other neighbors in the East and South China seas.

After nearly four years of often testy relations with Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, US President Barack Obama is about to try a different tack - going over the head of Israel's prime minister and appealing directly to the Israeli people.

If South Korea resorts to force to unify the peninsula, the region would be trapped in long-term chaos, as happened in the Middle East. A turbulent Korean Peninsula is harmful to China and the Northeast Asia. Both China and South Korea could be victims. The cost of abandoning North Korea is much higher than that of protecting it. China's strategic considerations should be aimed at maintaining the stability of the Korean Peninsula.

What is the State Department's strategy to counter China's use of soft power around the world? Host Carol Castiel and VOA State Department Correspondent Scott Stearns interview Tara Sonenshine, the Undersecretary of State for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs. In a wide-ranging interview, Sonenshine speaks about the role of public diplomacy and what the U.S. is doing to compete with China's growing soft power, particularly in Africa.

Thrown around in the Under Secretary's talk on America's public diplomacy abroad were commonly coined phrases like "return on investment" and "networks of good will."...Simply put, my problem is that we don't really live out public diplomacy here at home. I'm as proud an American citizen as anyone else but I do think how we define that citizenship requires reassessment. It is not OK that our country is present in so many places around the world and yet our people are turned inwards.