Over the past decade, China's economic and military might has grown impressively. This has frightened its neighbors into looking for allies to balance China's increase in hard power. But if a country can also increase its soft power of attraction, its neighbors feel less need to balance its power.

With U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton having visited India this week in an effort to secure its cooperation on a range of international issues, it is time to start thinking of India not as a beneficiary of the world's charity (though it still is) -- but as a major donor.

Even our soft power is not as uncontested as we may like to think. The global marketplace of ideas, fertilized by the Internet, ensures that different countries and cultures illuminate their own paths, affirm their own traditions and provide competing visions of the world to come. Yet, no new grand "-ism" is taking shape and no one country is becoming the new paragon.

China's mixed human rights record is not just bad for its citizens. It is a strategic weakness that complicates its foreign relations and diminishes its soft power. The state's harsh treatment of individuals and minorities regularly disrupts its bilateral relationships.