The Indian Council for Cultural Relations...has in recent years, shared the best of India with the world. And yet, for India's best and truest minds...a new and redemptive approach is needed. One that distinguishes our civilisation from our nation, and our nation from our State.

China’s rise to become the second largest economy in the world has inevitably seen it invest projects at home and abroad that have the potential to challenge other states. One recent such development is the country’s beefing up of its communications satellites capabilities.

The former governor of Massachusetts will lay out eight foreign policy-related actions he would implement... including creating economic opportunity in Latin America through a "robust public-diplomacy and trade promotion campaign."

Turkey could be a role model due to the many similarities between the country, a model that combines Islam with modernity, and Tunisia, Tunisian leader Rashid al-Ghannushi suggested...“I dream of a free, democratic, peaceful Tunisia, a country that can protect its developing identity,”

A two-day workshop discussing the latest developments in North Africa and the Arab countries...began in Istanbul...A new page has been turned in the Arab world and consecutive public revolutions have destroyed many of the myths about Arabs in the minds of the people.

Simon Anholt, a member of the U.K. Government’s Public Diplomacy Board...said Korea was showing significant progress in national branding after realizing that branding is not about trying to force people to buy its new self-image, but to show the world it is willing and has changed.

It is unclear what might have precipitated this precipitate shift in Chinese public diplomacy. Nothing seems to have transpired in the South China Sea, especially regarding Vietnam or the Philippines, to elicit such a series of over-wrought Chinese reactions. Just a few possible explanations include:

After 9/11 and the invasion and occupation of Afghanistan, whereas India projected soft power into Afghanistan, having by now invested some $ 2 billion in reconstruction and infrastructure building in Afghanistan, Pakistan stuck to its old paradigm of offering safe havens to and supporting a proxy war by the Taliban and Haqqani network.