Celebrated Pakistani movies drew packed houses on Saturday, the first day of Pakistan Film Festival’s triumphant debut in New York City. [...] Earlier, Pakistan’s Ambassador to the United Nations Maleeha Lodhi declared open the two-day festival, saying it is a part of the continuing efforts to promote cultural diplomacy and to project the country’s soft power.

[W]hen Mr. Zhao, a Chinese tourist, arrived with his wife in September, they spent their first day wandering the humdrum suburban office parks that Facebook and Google call home. Joining a guided bus tour with a dozen other Chinese visitors, the two became part of the steady flow of Chinese tourists to Silicon Valley that represents — despite pervasive censorship and outright hostility from the Chinese government — the tremendous influence Silicon Valley wields in China.

The English Premier League recently signed its biggest deal outside of the UK. Chinese electronics giant Suning has stumped up £560m for the television rights to broadcast its games to the growing legion of fans there. But it’s not just the size of the agreement that’s eye-catching. It’s a double display of soft power at work: by both China and the UK.

Over the past few decades of China’s rise, Beijing’s soft power pitch to the developing east has been an indictment of Ugly Americanism. China had fallen victim to Western and Japanese imperialism, and as a result pledged to act not as a patron but a partner in decolonialism and development. 

Japanese authorities now want to tap this soft power for tourism, amid an ambitious drive by the Abe administration to double burgeoning foreign tourist arrivals to 40 million by 2020. [...] The association, working with industry members and local governments, wants to create a whole suite of services and products, from shuttle buses to merchandising, to boost the experience for visitors - and bring in the yen.
 

Soon after coming to power, Prime Minister Narendra Modi prudently decided to emphasise India’s rich tradition of Buddhism in a soft-power approach to Asian geopolitics. Apart from countries like Nepal, Bhutan, Japan, Sri Lanka, South Korea, Mongolia and others, he even struck a direct chord with China to revive India-China ties.