South Korea has another item that’s ready for export. This time it’s not another high-tech marvel but a product of the country’s ancient culture, its own unique writing system known as Hangul, and it’s going to become the alphabet for a tribal grouping in a remote corner of Indonesia.

Tsinghua University, one of China’s top universities, said on Monday it will increase its number of foreign graduate students as Beijing steps up use of education and other “soft power” initiatives to promote its image abroad.

India's decision to host the Commonwealth Games seems to have become less popular in the country for its reported oganisational failures in the run-up to the Games. Staging the Games will not help much to advance its soft power.

Alarmist predictions in the press about the quality of French diplomacy are now commonplace in France, with diplomats saying that the country’s “soft power” capability is being seriously degraded.

...why are fewer students choosing to take French? And no offence to the likes of Charles De Gaulle, Asterix and the Michelin Man, but does it really matter?...The sudden decline in French-speaking could mark the end of a long-held attachment the British have felt to the language.

The good-will tour of the Middle East by the imam behind the proposed mosque near ground zero is just part of the U.S. government's efforts to reach out to the Muslim world. This year, the Obama administration will spend nearly $6 million to restore 63 historic and cultural sites, including mosques and minarets, in 55 nations.

Webster, Oxford and other dictionary merchants are yet to define "mango diplomacy", but when that day dawns the origins of the term would be sub-continental, with Pakistan and Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh featuring as its pioneers.

“When China awakes,” Napoleon is said to have warned, “the world will tremble.” For more than a century and a half after his time, that prospect seemed remote.