India was known for tolerance, spices, camels and austerity. Shashi Tharoor said that India has developed not only through trade and politics but through its soft power. This takes place through its ability to share its culture with the rest of the world via food, music, technology, and Bollywood.

Such "food diplomacy" allows Taiwan to demonstrate its soft power and helps strengthen trade in agricultural products between Taiwan and the United States, said Chang.

China is taking this cultural war seriously, on both domestic and international fronts. Beginning Jan. 1, two-thirds of entertainment programs on China’s 34 satellite channels, including game shows, dating shows and celebrity talk shows, were deemed “vulgar” and cut, making way for programs that “promote traditional virtues and socialist core values.”

What's Japan’s Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry's (METI), then, come up with as a solution? Jumpstarting international interest in its other endeavors, of course — fashion, design, anime. And to put a little umph in its appeal, they named their latest campaign Cool Japan.

Brand USA, a non-profit, public-private partnership, is to launch a global advertising campaign next month, as part of the country’s concerted effort in marketing tourism to the world. Symbolic as it may be, it sends an unmistakable signal reaffirming America’s openness and optimism, the very foundation of the country’s soft power.

The hallyu – or “Korean wave” as the phenomenon is known in Asia – is now spreading to Europe and the US, and spurring South Korea’s export earnings. Cultural exports are...giving the once reclusive country a global cachet for the first time, shaking off the war-torn images of the US comedy M*A*S*H.

China's soft power is not only coming from official diplomatic channels. Its average citizens have also been ambassadors for the country. Wherever the Chinese diaspora land, much evidence, anecdotal as well as statistical, confirms that the Chinese tend to become productive members of society without the help of affirmative action.

As the world becomes more and more "flat," per se, exchanges and communications become astonishingly bidirectional. And hybrid products are born through this bidirectional "flattening," process as you easily find in all manufactured and cultural products. Korean entertainment producers are smart enough to know how to blend ingredients for universal attraction...Therefore, pop culture is speedily eroding boundaries of nations, as any multinational companies do.