To showcase India's diverse cultural traditions, the Centre is now all set to expand its pool of artists and performers from different states who can participate in festivals organised abroad to enhance the country's soft power in the global arena.

Acting under directives from the central government, China's propaganda department is co-ordinating a global effort to step up its soft power outreach commensurate with its economic and political stature in the world, spending $US6.8 billion ($9.1 billion) a year to run and expand the international reach of official state-run media including Xinhua, CCTV, China Radio International and the China Daily.

It has been a shock for Baidu whose fortunes up until now had been very different. Together with the likes of Alibaba, Tencent, Suning, Baidu was supposed to be a role model business in what President Xi Jinping called the Chinese dream. [...] It is private sector internet entrepreneurs who project internationally China’s soft power, which remains disproportionately small compared to the size of its economy and military might.

The sky over Seoul was bright blue and the lecture hall on the 19th floor had a perfect view of Bukhan Mountain and the Blue House. The room was filled with over fifty Korean diplomats engaged in the field of public diplomacy and cultural diplomacy.

From New York to Yokohama, an unstoppable wave of yellow monsters is infiltrating public venues, performing strange rituals and targeting young humans. Having already dominated Japan and conquered a number of overseas markets, the “Pocket Monsters” video game series, now in its 20th year, is entering a new realm: reality.

"Our approach … is to use the ‘soft power’ of business," he says. "These businesses have influence as powerful economic actors and in countries in Africa and Southeast Asia; they are often very important to the local economy. [...] Soft power is one option, but companies could potentially use their economic clout by threatening to pull out of a country. 

Private efforts at gastrodiplomacy have also sprouted, including metro Detroit's own Peace Meal Kitchen, a newly launched pop-up dining and education series that highlights cultures from countries with which the U.S. is in conflict.

While Denison said that the Japanese government’s continued desire to clamp down on piracy demonstrated the soft power value of Japan’s anime industry, she also said that viewing methods had changed considerably over recent years.