Countries project power and influence in a number of ways. Traditionally they do so through military and economic clout. But education matters too. Alumni of Australian universities and colleges can be strong advocates of our cause and even our interests. They understand us and a crucial phase of their lives was spent with us and learning from us. This is soft power but real power.

Competitors, be it hard currency (trade) or hardware and software (information technology), India and China are, and have reasons to be, competing in exercising their soft power as well. Inheritors of ancient cultures that have influenced others for centuries, both vigorously "export" them as part of "soft diplomacy".

Granted, Mr Lin’s own path to stardom is in itself unprecedented, but in America, the unprecedented is possible. Chinese basketball fans have taken note of this. Mr Lin’s story may be a great and inspiring proof of athleticism to the Chinese people, but it is also unavoidably a story of American soft power.

It is clear that the GCC states have blended their soft power, wealth, media influence and undertaken bold initiatives to deal with the host of challenges and changes in a new Middle East, where the forces of realignment are at work. The GCC has its task cut out at this critical juncture in Arab history.

South Koreans have long been proud of their “wave,” the soft-power juggernaut of boy bands, movies and products that have penetrated Southeast Asia in a big way in recent years.

Obama has ... significantly improved America’s image and consequent “soft power” around the world. (The Pew Global Attitudes Project found that since 2008 the number of people with a ‘positive view’ of the US has climbed from 37 percent to 54 in Indonesia and from 42 percent to 75 percent in France...

Ms Khar and her government seem to be playing to the tune of the military establishment’s obsession with India and the inroads it has made by projecting ‘soft’ power in Afghanistan. That has allowed New Delhi to re-establish the historical friendship with Kabul, a development that has hardened the Pakistani GHQ’s approach to supporting Taliban proxies to control Afghanistan.

Without the sex, gore and contemporary politics Beijing's censors deplore, animation is family-oriented and easily redubbed, making it safe and both importable and exportable, and thus likely to lead the charge in a trans-Pacific race for soft power – one that Hollywood's currently leading.