Much has been written about China's rising economic and political power.
But China is flexing its cultural muscles too, setting up language institutes in dozens of countries and ramping up the global reach of its state-run news service in a bid to compete with the BBC and CNN.
In its efforts to extend its so called "soft power" there is one area, however, where it really should be doing better than it is, and that's cinema.
The potential is certainly there.
Forget drafty village halls showing worthy propaganda films, China is now the world's fastest-growing cinema market.
The ongoing construction boom saw more than 3,000 new screens open across the country last year.
At around $2bn (£1.2bn), ticket sales may still be only a fifth of America's total box office revenue, but the point is that China's middle class has still got a lot of growing to do.
America's hasn't.
So Hollywood is going to great lengths to get a piece of some of that Chinese revenue, bending over backwards sometimes so as not to cause offence.
Earlier this year when Men in Black 3 was released in China, a scene in which Chinese restaurant workers turn out to be evil alien baddies had been cut.
And when the makers of another big-budget Hollywood movie, the soon to be released Red Dawn, realised a Chinese invasion of America might not look good in China, they reportedly re-mastered the footage to give North Korea a more prominent role in the plot.
And so far, perhaps as a result of such careful wooing, the Hollywood story in China is turning into a full blown romance with a very happy ending.
US films have been gaining ground, even in a market where local productions are protected by a strict quota system that limits foreign film releases.
Under pressure from the World Trade Organisation, that limit has now been raised from 20 films a year to 34, and in the first six months of this year foreign films earned more than $800m in China.