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Once the Communist Party dismissed China's ancient culture as part of the country's 'backward' feudal past. But now Beijing is harnessing it in the service of the state, packaging treasures and traditions for export abroad in the hope of softening China's international image. Where once human rights issues and images of an authoritarian regime's goose-stepping soldiers dominated its international image, over the past decade Beijing has put cultural and educational exchange at the heart of its rebranding efforts. Adapted from the source document.

Brazilian music carries strong characteristics of its people and has become one of the most recognizable features of the country abroad. In this study, I analyze how Brazil is pictured overseas by the means of music as an element of soft power of the country. Nonetheless, I bring attention to the importance of self-awareness of the Brazilian identity and its relations with the image that the country has abroad. I address the issue through analysis of the cases of Heitor Villa-Lobos, Carmem Miranda, bossa nova, and heavy metal. In this analysis, the role of the Brazilian Ministry of Foreign Affairs is also taken into account. I suggest that Oswald de Andrade's anthropophagic idea can apply to the reflections of Brazilians towards their image abroad.

What does the world admire most about America? Science, technology, higher education, consumer goods-but not, it seems, freedom and democracy. Indeed, these ideals are in global retreat, for reasons ranging from ill-conceived foreign policy to the financial crisis and the sophisticated propaganda of modern authoritarians. Another reason, explored for the first time in this pathbreaking book, is the distorted picture of freedom and democracy found in America's cultural exports.In interviews with thoughtful observers in eleven countries, Martha Bayles heard many objections to the violence and vulgarity pervading today's popular culture. But she also heard a deeper complaint: namely, that America no longer shares the best of itself. Tracing this change to the end of the Cold War, Bayles shows how public diplomacy was scaled back, and in-your-face entertainment became America's de facto ambassador.This book focuses on the present and recent past, but its perspective is deeply rooted in American history, culture, religion, and political thought. At its heart is an affirmation of a certain ethos-of hope for human freedom tempered with prudence about human nature-that is truly the aspect of America most admired by others. And its author's purpose is less to find fault than to help chart a positive path for the future

1. Introduction: Reasserting America in the 1970s -- Hallvard Notaker, Giles Scott-Smith, David J. Snyder 2. Historical setting: the age of fear, uncertainty and doubt -- Thomas W. Zeiler Part I: A new public diplomacy for a new America 3. The Devil at the crossroads: USIA and American public diplomacy in the 1970s -- Nicholas J. Cull 4. The Sister City network in the 1970s: American municipal internationalism and public diplomacy in a decade of change -- Brian C. Etheridge 5. The exposure of CIA sponsorship of Radio Free Europe: the 'Crusade for Freedom', American exceptionalism and the foreign-domestic nexus of public diplomacy -- Kenneth Osgood 6. USIA responds to the women's movement, 1960-75 -- Laura A. Belmonte 7. 'The low key mulatto coverage': race, civil rights and American public diplomacy, 1965-76 -- Michael L. Krenn 8. Paintbrush politics: the collapse of American arts diplomacy, 1968-72 -- Claire Bower 9. Selling space capsules, Moon rocks and America: spaceflight in U.S.