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.

The new way of making war, the projection of “soft power,” is cynical in that it involves millions of people in the persuasion effort. The lords of this new media war are the communication and image experts closely tied to political power, producing a sophisticated kind of communication...

Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton have been busy reassuring European allies that the U.S. was not drawing down its commitment. Panetta even went so far as to claim that Europe is the “security partner of choice for military operations and diplomacy around the world.”

Shinkai has been awarded best director by the Association of Media in Digital (AMD), yet he remains relatively unknown beyond dedicated anime circles.That began to change this past fall, when he toured the United States and Britain...

China has initiated a "going out" policy that is aimed at taking the country's publishing industry to the next level, at home and abroad. Along with the Confucius Institute, which is opening schools across the globe, Chinese books are already proving a big draw overseas.

Chinese president-in-waiting Xi Jinping will spend most of his two-day California trip highlighting two things: films and basketball. Clayton Dube, associate director of the US-China Institute at USC, says China wants to mimic US “soft power” - its ability to influence world culture. “Soft power is what the US has in abundance and what Xi wants to know more about."

Essayist and cultural critic Lung Ying-tai, who took over as the new Council for Cultural Affairs (CCA) minister yesterday, said she believes a nation’s strength is determined by its “soft power” and that culture begins in the most remote places.

Blocs of large superpowers are no longer the movers and shakers, but rather "those who've got the 'soft power' and influence around the world -- these are the important people, and here we are standing in the midst of that," he said during an interview at the Vatican press office.