Chinese President Xi Jinping has embarked on a quest to make China’s voice heard internationally. “President Xi Jinping has vowed to promote China’s cultural soft power by disseminating modern Chinese values and showing the charm of Chinese culture to the world,” China’s Xinhua News Agency wrote in 2014. “The stories of China should be well told, voices of China well spread, and characteristics of China well explained,” the president said. 

The success of this wide range of programs reveals an important point — both Russian and U.S. citizens have many reasons to cooperate with each other. According to the U.S. Embassy, there is nearly $10 billion in U.S. investment in Russia, while Russian Embassy reports put Russian direct investment in the United States at around $8 billion. 

While U.S. officials are consulting intensely with their South Korean counterparts, not enough attention is being paid to Beijing’s perspective, even though China would figure heavily into any prospective U.S. action toward the North. By examining Beijing’s role in each of the three main North Korea policy strategies under debate in the United States, the “China factor” emerges as a decisive one, in ways that policymakers need to weigh carefully.

Just as American citizens are on the edge of their seats over the results, so too are international leaders, such as Chinese President Xi Jinping, whose relationships with the United States will be profoundly affected by the election’s outcome. The campaign raises a fundamental question for Chinese officials: Would they prefer the next U.S. president to be predictable or a wildcard? 

Beijing sees sporting prowess as a key soft power weapon and sensitivities over China’s performance at Rio 2016 led Chinese television censors to briefly stymie the BBC World broadcast about the plight of China’s gymnasts. The screen went black, as routinely occurs during stories considered politically inconvenient to the Communist Party. 

On 7 October, President Obama signed an executive order lifting nearly all of the remaining economic sanctions on Myanmar’s government [...]  Despite China’s enduring influence over its neighbour, the United States enjoys several unrecognised advantages over the Asian giant, flowing from its substantial soft power, an asset China has failed to cultivate.