By Timothy Garton Ash

Since returning to Britain after three months in America and China, I've been reflecting on how my home country is viewed by citizens of the present and the future superpower. What, if anything, do they see in Britain?

It's not Britain's economic, military or political power that registers with most Americans and Chinese. They barely notice it exists.

And they couldn't give a damn whether the British prime minister's name begins with a B or a C. (B for Gordon Brown, that is, or C for opposition leader David Cameron.)

What commands their attention, and often their admiration, is our culture.

The things they talk about spontaneously are a book, a film, a favourite actor, a rock band, a football team, a beautiful country town visited on holiday, or, most enduring of all, a period spent studying at a British school or university.

A few random examples: I walk across the campus of Peking University with a Chinese student who points to a tennis court and asks: 'What's that called in English?'

We call it a tennis court, I say, but for football it's a pitch.

'Yes, that I know,' she replies, 'like the Quidditch pitch'.

J.K.Rowling's world of Harry Potter, with its invented game of Quidditch, captured her imagination during a year she spent at the London School of Economics.

Then I talk to a leading journalist on Chinese state television.

Her daughter, she says, has just enrolled at Harrow in Beijing, a subsidiary of Winston Churchill's old school.

After that, she thinks Cambridge or Oxford would be the best place for her daughter to study, before graduate work at Harvard.

A Chinese lawyer reports that some Oxford University alumni in Beijing have started their own informal dining club. They call it the Oxford Club.

At a cafe in California, I'm discussing this whole phenomenon with a British friend who is now a US-based leader of the global design industry.

American at the next table leans over, excuses himself for interrupting, and says that one explanation for British cultural power is that Brits just use the English language more articulately than most Americans do.

This does appear to be a widespread American belief.

It's remarkable how often US television and radio advertisements will use a British voice: A BBC classical music announcer kind of voice for high culture events, but also actress Liz Hurley for some fashion product (if memory serves) and a crypto- Cockney for Geico insurance.

A San Francisco film critic says that in American eyes, or rather ears, an English accent instantly adds 10 per cent to your IQ.

Even former US president Richard Nixon seems to have shared this view.

On one of the Nixon tapes we hear him ruminating: 'Wouldn't it be great if the British were strong enough to play a bigger role in the world? They're so Goddamn intelligent.'

Elsewhere, there's another potent cultural reference point.

On a visit to Myanmar a few years ago, I was accosted by a young Buddhist monk at Yangon's golden Shwedagon pagoda. 'Aya Shiya!' he cried, placing his hands together in greeting.

'Aya Shiya!'

What ancient Buddhist blessing was this?

What concentrated profundity of oriental wisdom?

Finally I recognised the name of Alan Shearer, a well- known Newcastle United football team striker.

On poor streets from Cairo to Sao Paolo, kids will greet a visitor from Britain with the familiar cry of 'Manchester United!' In terms of Britain's worldwide pulling power, footballer David Beckham is worth 50 Trident missiles.

He is our force de frappe.

Several questions arise.

Are some of these outsiders overrating British culture?

For the most part, I would like to think not, although I must say that some Americans do overdo this British articulacy and cleverness thing.

United States President-elect Barack Obama, for example, uses the English language better than most British politicians of my acquaintance.

To the extent that they are not overrating it, why is British culture so strong?

My friend in the design business has an interesting thesis: Britain, he argues, has somehow happened upon the right mix of intellectualism and commercialism.

France veers too much to the intellectual end, America too much to the commercial. Then there's London, the world city where everything and everyone meets.

And, I would add, the unique resource of the BBC.

Plus the English language, of course. And perhaps also the fact that we Brits have to live by our wits because we haven't got much else left to sell. (Manufacturing now accounts for less than one-fifth of Britain's GDP.)

Then there's the question of what we need to do here in Britain to keep this culture vibrant.

Last but not least: how to enable this culture to exert the maximum magnetic power abroad, assuming we think that would be a good thing?

We must be careful about the role of the state here.

Too much state intervention can suffocate a culture.

The multi-millionaire author Rowling certainly does not need a subsidy, nor does Beckham, although public funding is essential for the cultivation of future Rowlings (in schools) and future Beckhams (on pitches).

Unlike defence, where the state should have a monopoly, in unfolding a country's cultural power, the state should play only an enabling role. It's an unhealthy society that has private armies, a healthy one that has private galleries, publishers, film studios and universities.

Nonetheless, I think there are some areas where - if this analysis of the relative magnetism of the four dimensions of British power is correct - more public funding would be appropriate.

Top of my personal list would be scholarships for overseas students. Well, I would say that wouldn't I, being in a university.

But I believe I could make a strong case, even to the hardest hearts at Britain's fearsome national audit office, that the lifelong effect of a few formative years spent at a British university adds up to a return on investment second to none.

That's certainly the British experience with Rhodes scholars and with Marshall scholars from the United States.

We should be doing the same with many more young people from other places, including China, India and the Middle East.

So should other free countries with good universities.

The BBC obviously has to be kept at the longest possible arm's length from government.

But I return from three months of watching satellite and cable TV news in distant places more than ever convinced that, with some additional funding, the BBC's worldwide television news channel could beat CNN, and all the rest, to become the world's most respected source of international television news.

Compared to the budgets for defence, overseas development and the Foreign Office, that of the British Council, the organisation dedicated to promoting British culture abroad, can only be described as piddling.

Any assumption that the English language will simply spread itself, by the workings of free-market laws of supply and demand, is a risky one - and needs to be re-examined, along with other assumptions about the faultless workings of the free market.

In the current financial climate, it's probably unrealistic to imagine that spending on these areas will rise, although I think it should.

At the very least, they should not be cut in favour of those with better organised lobbies inside government.

Culture is the fourth dimension of British power. In the long run, it may be the most important of them all.

This article was first published in The Straits Times on December 12, 2008.