Mr. Aquino’s visit highlights China’s successful use of soft power to build relationships based on inducements and gestures of goodwill rather than aggression and interference in domestic affairs. China’s success is evident in turning Southeast Asia into a peaceful and prosperous backyard that allows it to concentrate on modernizing its economy.

Polling for self-understanding. Opinion research has the role of giving the entire society, and groups within it, a better understanding of their cultural identities and where they stand on various issues. Opinion research consistently finds that familiarity breeds, not contempt, but appreciation.

With rising Sinophobia and calls for an anti-China boycott, the Philippines has openly spurned China's earlier soft power, trade and investment-oriented advances. Whether those sentiments materialize into concrete anti-China policies and actions is unclear.

From Chinese phonetics to Chinese calligraphy, they will be teaching Mandarin and Chinese culture to public high school students as part of the education department's foreign language programme.

Aside from performances by the Philippine All Strar hip-hop, crooner Jed Madela singing Broadway tunes, US Navy fleet band, Baguio residents will also get the chance to participate in interactive games and contests organized by the US embassy.

Some politicians, scholars and officials wishfully claim that co-operative activities such as ship visits, combined disaster-relief exercises or partnership against piracy will translate into wider strategic trust. But there is little sign this is happening.

He is also ambassador for the National Commission for the Culture and the Arts and for the child-centered NGO Plan International. He will soon be formally presented as ambassador of goodwill of the UN Population Fund to help in the AIDS and HIV information dissemination.

Undersecretary Rafael Seguis...said that DFA could not afford to ignore or belittle the role of the media in times of disasters or emergencies.Seguis said that the media are also a vital partner in public diplomacy thru the use of networking sites like Facebook or Twitter or other sites.