China and Thailand have agreed to exchange educational and cultural systems in which both countries will send language instructors to train children of their countries in preparations for the Asean Economic Community (AEC) which will kick off in 2015, said Education Minister Suchart Thada-Thamrongvech.

The two countries should expand cultural and people-to-people exchanges so as to consolidate the foundation of their friendship. He said they should make full use of the Confucius Institute and the Chinese culture center in Bangkok to further enhance cooperation in areas including culture, education, tourism and youth exchanges.

Thailand should brand itself by integrating campaigns initiated by its various ministries and agencies and sending a clear message to the world, says WPP, the world's largest advertising group.

Thailand is now most of the way through the first term of the Obama administration, and US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has introduced and implemented the concept of "smart power" in relation to US foreign policy, which attempts to strategically combine elements from both "hard power" and "soft power" approaches.

It started as a humble DJ session in a Bangkok bar. A few years later, it has traveled to Japan and Europe, spawned two CD compilations on international labels, and transformed into a biannual showcase starring some of Thailand’s most important musicians.

Soft power and public diplomacy activities were rammed up ahead of the East Asian Summit (EAS) in Bali to lay the engagement groundwork. In Indonesia, a Department of Defence-funded integrated maritime surveillance system has just been handed over to the Indonesian government, with the US committed to supporting the programme until 2014.

Laos and Myanmar...are grappling with decisions on whether to build massive hydropower dams on the two significant rivers. The projects could put fragile ecology and associated livelihoods at risk, but the dams could help the two countries reap billions of dollars by exporting the megawatts to China and Thailand, two neighbors with rapidly growing energy demand.

The U.S. and Thailand should expand their relationship to fully enable a new era of security cooperation, trade, promotion of shared values, and public diplomacy cooperation, building on the U.S. embassy’s role as a nexus for regional relations.