Things ot be aware of: Noopolitik

In political science Noopolitik from the Greek Noos (knowledge) and German Politik (politics) is the network-based geopolitics of knowledge. The term was invented by defense experts John Arquilla and David Ronfeldt in a seminal RAND corporation study of 1999 and often appears in connection with that of smart power.

Noopolitics is an informational strategy of manipulating international processes through the forming in general public by means of mass media of positive or negative attitude to external or internal policy of a state of block of states to create a positive or negative image of ideas and promulgated moral values...

While the term initially appeared in association with the concept of the US Revolution in Military Affairs, Noopolitik has also come to describe an interest in theKnowledge Economy and in particular innovation and R&D to leverage growth and political reach in international relations. Thus Noopolitik may be defined as the use of innovation and knowledge to leverage political intercourses by other means at the international level. Such "knowledge race" may be either a means of asserting political independence or of generating a sudden gap in the geopolitical balance of power.... 

Professor Li Xiguang of Tsinghua University described the stakes of Smart power for the People's Republic of China in a 2010 article on Noopolitik in the Global Times 

Soft power is the power of making people love you. Hard power is the ability to making people fear you. Over the last 500 years, all the world powers gained their hegemony through hard power, but the US has gained its hegemony through combining hard power and soft power, both striking at and assimilating its opponents.

The US has built its soft power by making its values and political system, such as the US interpretation and definition of democracy, freedom and human rights, into supposedly universal values.

Innovation war.

Emphasizing China’s deeply-rooted desire for technological independence, Segal refers to the PRC’s efforts as an “Innovation Wall,” which is the willingness to innovate as independently as possible from the rest of the world to simply and systematically leap ahead of any other country. Needless to say, the scope of the rising fog of war in world economic and R&D competition is particularly daunting for the Euro-Atlantic community. The Chinese phrase for national innovation zizhu chuangxin was notably coined in a 2006 state report titled “Guidelines on National Medium- and Long-Term Program for Science and Technology Development.” If China decides to foster an innovation of its own, and the ideas were published in Mandarin language journals it would provide a barrier against other linguistic communities, and a thicker fog of war might rise in knowledge-based economic warfare.

Noopolitik
Wikipedia