DreamWorks Animation has become the second Hollywood studio to enter into a distribution agreement with China's top online video site, Youku.com. Youku said Monday that it had signed a deal with the Glendale-based animation studio to distribute the "Kung Fu Panda" movies in China, marking the first time that DreamWorks releases have been made available in that country through the Internet.

With the twin crises of the American budget deficit and the European public borrowing emergency, China has ample worries. China is nonetheless active in bilateral relations with EU member states, and this involves commercial diplomacy, high-level visits and public diplomacy. The last increasingly revolves around the notion of “helping friends,” whether these are nations in need of investment or simply cash.

Taiwan has been a relatively quiet player in the tense dispute about territorial claims in the South China Sea. That could change with an unusual initiative that Taipei says is a peaceful approach to asserting its sovereignty in a body of water where China, Vietnam, the Philippines, Malaysia and Brunei also have claims. The plan involves tourists, rare turtles and a remote atoll.

Mr. Aquino’s visit highlights China’s successful use of soft power to build relationships based on inducements and gestures of goodwill rather than aggression and interference in domestic affairs. China’s success is evident in turning Southeast Asia into a peaceful and prosperous backyard that allows it to concentrate on modernizing its economy.

An important asset that New Delhi has failed to exploit vis-à-vis its neighbours is its soft power. Sports, economy, Bollywood, education, infrastructure, healthcare, tourism, history and heritage — there is so much that can be used by the country to influence its neighbourhood.

Our foreign policy should be directed at supporting resistance groups to dictators and funding radio, TV stations and the internet, in the same way the CIA did in the Cold War to undermine communism. Where is the Middle East equivalent to Radio Free Europe?

China has “always supported the legitimate rights of the Palestinian people to establish an independent state” on all of the West Bank, the Gaza Strip and in Israeli-annexed east Jerusalem, WAFA quoted Hu as saying.

Therefore,...as some observers have predicted, that Angola would fall under greater Chinese control. While China has gained an impressive economic presence in Angola, its political and diplomatic influence is growing weaker by the day, and its soft power is rather weak.