This is our target, to keep youth healthy, mind-wise, motivated, productive. You have to invest in the right culture. Leaving such spaces, now it's very dangerous, not for Arabs, but for the international community that many terrorist groups and fundamentalists and radical ideas can infiltrate the new media and new technology to the minds of children and youths and youngsters. They can implant their seeds for irregular thinking and bad doing.

While U.S. officials are consulting intensely with their South Korean counterparts, not enough attention is being paid to Beijing’s perspective, even though China would figure heavily into any prospective U.S. action toward the North. By examining Beijing’s role in each of the three main North Korea policy strategies under debate in the United States, the “China factor” emerges as a decisive one, in ways that policymakers need to weigh carefully.

Beijing sees sporting prowess as a key soft power weapon and sensitivities over China’s performance at Rio 2016 led Chinese television censors to briefly stymie the BBC World broadcast about the plight of China’s gymnasts. The screen went black, as routinely occurs during stories considered politically inconvenient to the Communist Party. 

From a ‘cultural ambassador’, the Vietnamese tourism sector is making efforts to make the Ao Dai into a ‘tourism ambassador’. The image of Ao Dai has been used to promote the beauty of Vietnamese culture. In addition, the long dress has become a tourism product.

Mexico’s international image is in shambles. Once lauded as a promised land by the international media and markets, Mexico has completely lost its mojo due to an improper administration, plagued by scandals. At the beginning of his administration, President Peña Nieto was widely described as Mexico’s savior. 

America’s historical quest for freedom and democracy has been all but stamped out under the Obama administration in its quest to weaken American power, hard or soft. During Soviet times, Radio Free Europe and other Western media outlets did a good job of telling the world [...] We need to restore this vision and capability with similar, modern media efforts around the globe to tell the American story.

Wushu's global sporting popularity pales before karate, judo and taekwondo, but state media reported this month that a "Wushu Cultural Industry Investment Fund" worth $7 billion has been set up to run tournaments and promote it at home and abroad. [...] The Chinese government's development plan for the sport from 2016-2020 says that its aims include "increasing national confidence and boosting national cultural soft power".