A breakthrough in the final hours of Xi Jinping's US tour has eased restrictions on imports of US films into China, and could lead to more 3D and Imax films being made in Hollywood...For Chinese, "more US movies may force domestic producers to take a correct attitude toward their works and learn from others."

China has agreed to open its market to more US films and provide better terms to US studios. "This agreement with China will make it easier than ever before for US studios and independent filmmakers to reach the fast-growing Chinese audience, supporting thousands of American jobs in and around the film industry," US Vice-President Joe Biden said in a statement.

"It’s surprising and heartbreaking to see so many people misunderstand and misinterpret our country," says Kang Woo-sung, who is in the forefront of numerous campaigns designed to raise awareness of Korea in the United States. Based in Manhattan, Kang has so far organized efforts to correct confusing menus at the city’s Korean restaurants, and even went as far as introducing Korean ghosts.

Granted, Mr Lin’s own path to stardom is in itself unprecedented, but in America, the unprecedented is possible. Chinese basketball fans have taken note of this. Mr Lin’s story may be a great and inspiring proof of athleticism to the Chinese people, but it is also unavoidably a story of American soft power.

Obama has ... significantly improved America’s image and consequent “soft power” around the world. (The Pew Global Attitudes Project found that since 2008 the number of people with a ‘positive view’ of the US has climbed from 37 percent to 54 in Indonesia and from 42 percent to 75 percent in France...

Without the sex, gore and contemporary politics Beijing's censors deplore, animation is family-oriented and easily redubbed, making it safe and both importable and exportable, and thus likely to lead the charge in a trans-Pacific race for soft power – one that Hollywood's currently leading.

Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton have been busy reassuring European allies that the U.S. was not drawing down its commitment. Panetta even went so far as to claim that Europe is the “security partner of choice for military operations and diplomacy around the world.”

Even if the politics of India-United States ties sometimes falls short of the hoop, the two nations continue to score slam-dunks in terms of bilateral sport diplomacy. This week the U.S. State Department announced that the second round of people-to-people exchanges under its Sports Visitor programme...