The international film business can bridge a lot of cultural divides. But can it knock down one of the great walls of cinema culture that stands between China and the U.S.? The people behind the Chinese epic "The Heroes of Nanking" hope their movie can help create a new pipeline.

The Nobel Prize − that ultimate soft-power statement − must now compete with alternative human rights awards. Gadhafi could bestow his own award on Turkish premier Recep Tayyip Erdogan, from one moral paragon to another.

DUBAI --- Take a look at Barack Obama’s 2009 speech in Cairo. It was beautifully written and radiated good intentions. The U.S. government relied heavily on new media tools to disseminate it throughout the Arab world and beyond. Arab opinion of Obama improved significantly; and then it dropped like a rock.

Taiwan has a plan to compete with China in the international cultural propaganda stakes: by opening “Taiwan Academies” that will teach the Chinese language with a strong focus on traditional characters and culture.

Some tourist destinations thrown into the media glare by political turmoil or natural disasters are starting to incorporate these events into their marketing campaigns. Take, for instance, Chile's re-branded campaign slogan ‘Chile is good for you’.

China plans a theme park to celebrate Hello Kitty, the cutesy cat with no mouth but a cult-like following…Hello Kitty’s popularity in China can be seen as a counterpoint to Sino-Japanese political tensions by demonstrating the population’s embrace of Japanese style...

South Korea will use its "soft power" as an instrument of cultural diplomacy to promote exchanges in various areas between countries, the parliamentary speaker said Thursday, as he prepared to host a conference of his counterparts from the Group of 20 countries next week.

...the Israeli government takes the role of public diplomacy very seriously... The Israeli government has its own word that has been used since the 1970s in relation to their own public diplomacy work. Hasbara is roughly translated as ‘explanation’ and is used under the context of Israeli policy and actions.