I just finished reading Charm Offensive: How China’s Soft Power Is Transforming the World by Joshua Kurlantzick, a visiting scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace - a think-tank closely associated with the United States State Department.

The book was an instant hit last year, and inevitably stirred up some heated debate within the Chinese intelligentsia.

Kurlantzick - being a well-read, observant and globetrotting writer - certainly gathered substantive as well as substantial information for the book. For instance, he gives a comprehensive account of how Beijing cashed in on Washington’s failure to intervene in the 1997 Asian financial crisis and the catastrophic consequences of the Iraq War in 2003 to shore up support for China across Southeast Asia.