The potency of mangoes — and their — mythical reputation in Pakistan and many other parts of South Asia, was brought home to me last week when, as it does most years, the Pakistani embassy in Brussels held a ‘mango extravaganza’ in a prestigious local hotel whose chef has finessed the art of turning mangoes into pieces of culinary magic.

Hu Yuandong of UNIDO...says the focus of the project is job creation, poverty alleviation and environmental protection. Xiao has made clear that the $3bn investment is not coming from the Chinese government, but rather from various funds "around the world" - even from the Middle East. But it would be difficult not to see this as a smart move by China and an extension of its soft power.

Turkey is a bridge between East and West, the only Muslim member of NATO... It is also a free market success story and a geopolitical “soft power,” an agent of moderation, reconciliation, peace and stability in a volatile region stretching from the Middle East to Afghanistan/Pakistan and from the Mediterranean to the Balkans and the Caucasus.

Yang also touted the benefits of the administration's flexible diplomacy, which he said avoided competition or direct confrontation with the mainland and relied instead on Taiwan's economic and democratic soft power to create opportunities for Taiwan in the international arena.

The link between football, identity, unity and nationhood is so strong that many newly-found states, or states divided by war, have used the soft power of football to achieve hard political aim.

With rising Sinophobia and calls for an anti-China boycott, the Philippines has openly spurned China's earlier soft power, trade and investment-oriented advances. Whether those sentiments materialize into concrete anti-China policies and actions is unclear.

The government needs to establish a body dedicated to cultural diplomacy using the country’s soft power, a group of foreign affairs experts said Wednesday calling for a related law

Two and a half years after Obama came to office, raising expectations for change among many in the Arab world, favorable ratings of the United States have plummeted in the Middle East, according to a new poll conducted by Zogby International for the Arab American Institute Foundation.