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Go live there for a while, travel the country and then come to the same conclusion as pretty much every other foreigner, which is "No, god no, absolutely not".
People here have touched on the topic of the PRCs moral bankruptcy and how unpleasant the culture is, but I'm going to focus on something a little more mundane and say that if the PRC becomes ascendant and starts trying to export soft power via cultural exports, you will weep and beg for the woke media to return to save you.
It is my firm belief that Chinese opera should be classified as a form of torture and America missed a trick by not staging mandatory performances at Guantanamo. Lion dances are great though, I'm fine with them exporting that.
No one watches those except for the tourists. They have their own modern entertainment, which... Okay, I've seen some of it and it's not my cup of tea, but it's definetely a normal, modern entertainment.
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My riff on this for years has been how poorly Chinese cultural and political export industry goes. It's like an early model AI trying to write a birthday card for your mum. The words and sentiment are there. But it just feels like 15 degrees off somehow.
Their political engagement with the west is just cringe. When they try to pressure western countries it just comes off as the third born child turning 25 and finally standing up for themselves at the family barbecue. Everybody stands there quietly for a moment until big sis sniggers behind her hand and a smiling dad tells everybody to settle down.
Chinese news, from serious journalism to state mandated military propaganda is like something you'd read in a sci fi novel. "How can people take this seriously lol?"
Cultural export from China is crazily uncharismatic. And this is why, in my view, the US would end up with all the allies in WWIII and china would end up with the dregs of the international community. Nobody likes china, nobody outside of china knows what's going on in china, and nobody in china knows what's going on inside china either.
For all their economic progress, China have been totally unable to evolve in that cultural sphere. They can do the Peter Theil style "import all the good business ideas and scale them" but because they're locked in on maintaining their own cultural identity, which the CCP guards with an iron fist, they just cannot import Hollywood or Reddit. Because if they did, they'd feel the cascading oblivion of Western culture. A culture that would endanger the CCP more and more every day.
The result is a pretty ghastly and stagnant cultural climate that's stuck in, at best, the 90s.
But they have fast trains at least.
I think this is because Chinese culture of today is not Chinese, but some weird modernist cargo cult culture based on the Chinese perception of the west. It’s of course uncharismatic because it’s a poor imitation of the real thing. And that also contribute to the poor taste of our people.
There is a disconnect between Chinese and the Chinese culture. It’s a civilization that have suffered utter defeat for 100 years, and then ruled by actual progressives who blame said defeat on their own culture and want to distance themselves from it for another 30 years, until they regain a bit of sanity. That’s about four or five generations. Many cultural memories, traditions, vocabularies are lost and hard for people to reconnect. This makes it really hard for the Chinese to export genuine Chinese culture. I think this might be an issue that will get solved once people become richer and have more free time and resource for artistic pursuit but we shall see.
Doesn't this roughly describe post-Meiji Japan too? Somehow they punch well above their weight in global culture (sushi, anime, business). (South) Korea arguably fits this narrative too, only with different imperial powers.
I don’t think the Japanese or the South Koreans have been ruled by their own people who actively destroyed their cultural heritage. Yes the Japanese had their own identity crisis after the Meiji restoration (e.g. 脱亚入欧) but I’m not sure if there is a societal wide, bottom up or top down destruction of its own cultural heritage similar to China. The South Koreans are subjugated by the Japanese from 1870s to 1945 and were forcefully Japanified, but being colonized is different from what we’re talking about here. North Koreans sure, and I don’t think they have any positive cultural export. Neither does Vietnam. I think the Vietnamese has the same problem just like us.
I guess a good comparison would be … the Turks? An empire that suffered defeat after defeat for a century and ruled by progressives who have in fact latinized their language and destroyed at least part of their cultural heritage? I’m not that familiar with them to tell if it’s an accurate description of their experience, but I’m also not reading Turkish novels or wearing Turkish clothes.
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China is the big replicator. Their biggest cultural exports are Arknights, Genshin Impact and Zenless Zone Zero, all exploitative online games with anime art, nothing original. However, they can simply make a hundred more gachas and export the one that is exceptionally good.
As I said, copying things is not charisma. Where they can import a blueprint and copy another product, they do fine.
But that's anti leadership. Which is my point.
At this point (at least in gaming) we've hit a weird point where the west refuses to make the original recipe and therefore China is starting to overtake a bit.
What you are saying was super true for the longest time but Wokeness has left an opportunity and Asian produced and flavored things are taking over because the West is ass.
See: Kpop Demon Hunters for one. The amount of money made by Genshin et al for another.
I mean it's no mistake that the first truly mainstream content about K Pop was produced by Netflix. But regardless, I don't consider Korean or Japanese cultural influence as limited as Chinese influence.
Because the main problem for China is the CCP. Not Chinese people or culture.
I'm diagusted by the cultural vandalism of wokeness too btw. I just don't think our pursuit of enrichment will be done with a CCP member scowling over the director's shoulder back stage.
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The US is losing its luster very quickly in Europe.. Hard to expect better elsewhere.
Do you actually believe this? Hollywood and Reddit, in 2026, really, that's the all-crushing maw of the cultural singularity, the engine powering Cthulhu's inexorable march of progress?
That's not really how the youth feels. Watch some streamers man.
Very much of this confident American commentary is just totally divorced from current reality. Their games are crushing it, their social media is extremely popular, their products are winning real respect. You're declining on literally every metric and don't even know it yet. You engage with the funny state propaganda staffed by the failsons of officials and assorted dregs of the Chinese society and think that's the spearpoint. It's the rear end.
USA has far more interests in playing world police, anyways. If anything China's fairly deliberate about not taking over any of the 'USA must feed the entire world and defend it and yaddayaddayadda' roles that have developed over the last few decades.
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The Western media's been nosediving in quality since the rise of wokeness, though. I'd prefer 20 year old Western highlights against current China stuff, but right now it's essentially Tiktok noise v Tiktok noise for a lot of casual media. I watched more decent quality Chinese films last year than I did Western ones, albeit maybe 2025 was just a bad year for Western Film.
The Chinese system isn't perfect but reigns in antisocial random battle encounters on public transport and seems to be trending in the right direction.
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On the other hand Chinese cartoons and mobile games are ascendant and while still niche are quite competitive with Japanese ones.
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