Beijing knows how important China is for Hollywood and it can afford to make high demands. Western producers are still lining up to get access to the Chinese market. In addition to mercantile barriers, China has also set up cultural barriers to Hollywood. The goal is to make sure the local film industry isn't suffocated by Hollywood. And, fascinated by Hollywood's soft power, the leadership in Beijing is dreaming of setting up their own big industry in the medium term. Hollywood, India's Bollywood, now soon "Chinawood"?

Over the last six months, the Russian propaganda machine has pursued a two-pronged strategy toward its domestic audience.  Russia’s propaganda effort also has a global dimension.  How should the US government respond?

China is poised to displace the U.S. as the world’s biggest business-travel market by 2016, aided by accelerating export growth and slowing inflation.  In China, the increasing pace of exports since mid-2013, consumer prices running below government targets and nominal wage gains that support more spending and profit growth are contributing to an expansion in the market. 

On a Chinese hospital ship off Hawaii, crew members demonstrate traditional massage techniques to U.S. sailors. The mood is one of collegiality, even after China opted out of Japan-led humanitarian drills at the world’s largest international naval exercise.

The new battle for Africa does not deploy strong-arm tactics, it is now a soft power game: economic and humanitarian aid, interest-free loans, preferential trade agreements and investments in infrastructure are currency across a continent that is, for the world's established and emerging powers, seemingly up for grabs.

Held for the second time this year, the camp mostly eschews religious practice, except for brief midday prayers. Instead, the emphasis is on traditional Islamic arts and crafts that are not commonly taught in America — including paper marbling, marquetry (wood inlay) and decorative bookbinding — as well as on personal development through community service and leadership workshops.

This summer, 500 Africans studied business, leadership and public management on American campuses as part of a new State Department program.  The Obama administration has hailed the effort, which is part of the larger Young African Leaders Initiative, as a fresh take on public diplomacy.

Last year, the Syrian military-police photographer defected to the West. Investigators later gave him the code name Caesar to disguise his identity.  All told, Caesar helped smuggle more than 50,000 pictures out of Syria—his own and many others he downloaded that were taken by other photographers, according to activists working with him.