To be successful and competitive in the long run, the private sector must manage global issues with numerous geographic and geopolitical challenges with creativity and dexterity, re-defining traditional notions of global engagement and public diplomacy along the way. A hybrid form of Smart Power on steroids.

On her graduation day at the prestigious Kennedy School at Harvard, Yang Jia’s dean called her “China’s soft power”. A decade later, Yang, 49, has probably become more than that — in a country which has the largest population of the disabled in the world, visually impaired Yang is now its symbol of hope.

“She has made people all over the world more respect, appreciate and understand America,” says one of her predecessors, Madeleine Albright. “She has made very clear what American values are while at the same time understanding other countries’ national interests.”

Hong Kong-based Phoenix Satellite Television Holdings Ltd will receive an unspecified level of financial support from Bank of China Ltd to boost the development of China's cultural industry, Xinhua news agency reported on Sunday.

On the opposing side, there are those who cite Kuwait in the sixties, seventies and a substantial part of the eighties when its leadership in development, business, foreign aid and cultural production afforded it a soft power influence many times its counterparts.

Unlike Augustan Rome, the Song Dynasty that inspired Qingming Shanghe Tu exerted a different kind of power.... Its entrepreneurs and scholars invented technologies still in use today, technologies that enabled widespread education, encouraged trade and travel, inspired artistic excellence and not only tolerated but encouraged diversity and openness.

One aspect is culture, a powerful, but as-yet poorly deployed tool in the exercise of China's soft power and public diplomacy... This is important because as the Chinese learn how to use these tools better, they will more effectively compete in the contest for hearts and minds. It's also critical if this country is ever to move from merely "Made in China" to its long elusive goal of "Created in China."

The institutional efforts that have been made so far to integrate African nations politically and economically have so far failed to materialize any formal strength and lack any enforcement mechanism to uphold their rules... in the future, the regional economy would be organized on both voluntary (soft power) and coercive (Nigeria’s UN military commitments and South Africa’s financial prowess) bases.