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PaperclipPerfector  1d ago (text post)   3943 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of January 19, 2026

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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.

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.

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.

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.

The US is losing its luster very quickly in Europe.. Hard to expect better elsewhere.

they just cannot import Hollywood or Reddit. Because if they did, they'd feel the cascading oblivion of Western culture

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?

The result is a pretty ghastly and stagnant cultural climate that's stuck in, at best, the 90s.

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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