If Mr. Xi can appear at ease in the informal atmosphere of a Lakers game, he may succeed where Mr. Hu failed in establishing a more friendly image in the U.S. to help counterbalance perceptions among many Americans of China as a military and commercial adversary.

The Senate report, " Latin American Governments Need to 'Friend' Social Media and Technology " was written at the request of U.S. Senator Richard G. Lugar (R-IN) in order to assess the U.S. Department of State's use of digital diplomacy.

China has launched a multi-million pound effort to improve its image around the world with the launch of a new global news TV station that it hopes will one day compete with global names such as the BBC, CNN and Al Jazeera. The new station 'CCTV America', has hired more than 60 international staff in a bid to produce credible programmes that will aim to give a voice to Beijing's view of the world.

The American Film Showcase, an international cultural diplomacy initiative that brings people together worldwide through film...a partnership between the U.S. Department of State and USC’s School of Cinematic Arts, brings award-winning American films...to foreign audiences through events worldwide.

The State Department’s Art in Embassies program...is one of the premier public-private partnership arts organizations in continuous operation in 180 countries worldwide...It plays an important role in U.S. public diplomacy through a culturally expansive mission that creates temporary exhibits and permanent collections, artist and cultural exchange programming, and publications, they added.

A vestige of the “anti-public diplomacy” of the previous decade is likely to get trimmed. The U.S. Embassy in Baghdad, a giant of a compound that dwarfs in physical size and the number of people of any other diplomatic post, U.S. or otherwise, is likely to shrink. According to The New York Times, the compound costs $6 billion annually. (Seriously?)

Timothy H. Parsons in his book, The Rule of Empires, describes the Romans as “deft practitioners of soft power.” Rome preferred to rule the conquered and the potentially hostile through “semiautonomous client kings which the Senate euphemistically termed ‘friends of the Roman people.’