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Perhaps try talking to Chinese people? The great firewall is one way restricting Chinese from accessing google or facebook, they've got wechat and bilibili and xiaohongshu. Nothing stopping you from shitposting on XHS to see whats up there, mainlander degeneracy is pretty top tier brainrot that doesn't need translation to understand.
Its not that Japanese are any less inscrutable than Chinese, whatever caricature of the Japanese or Korean people that has been internalizes as a representative modality is almost purely inference. Talking to westerners makes it sound like Japanese offices are filled with dead overworked corporate lifers and panty vending machines while Korea is the end boss of narcissistic consumerism.
Seriously, its like none of you guys here whining about China or Chinese people actually met anyone based in the mainland. No one is obligated to talk to someone for the sake of it, but assigning population level mystique is a category error. Talk to chinese people online, they're much more retardedly normal than you think. Less nefarious intent on dominating westoids, more shitposting on shopping livestreams.
Can you make a basic effort to understand what I'm saying?
To put it more succinctly, China has very little cultural impact on the world. And in the few mediums that they try to, it comes off poorly.
If your answer is to log into billbill or xiaohongshu to experience chinese culture, you're making my point for me. Nobody is doing this. Normies have no idea what you're even talking about.
"Just go talk to them". I don't "just go talk to" Americans. American culture is so pervasive that I organically experience their culture daily, passively.
I can't scroll on this forum without being blasted with "Europeans are pussies lol". I have no issue saying "chinese culture is uncharismatic" when it's a model that describes why Chinese politics, diplomacy and cultural engagement largely fails. I can say it when nobody outside of the Chinese political elite actually really know whats going on in china.
Every one of these responses that says "actually China is good at engaging with the world, you're just too ignorant to know it" has made some incredibly poor assumptions about me. I'm not saying this because I'm not looking. I'm saying this because I'm looking and noticing.
You specifically state that the CCP restricts bottom up engagement. China may be invisible at engaging the world, in which case their shit just sucks too hard for people outside to care about (a valid take indicative of preference shaping) or the Chinese propaganda effort is just not working - which is a less valid take since it assigns intent where none reasonably exists. Chinese media isn't interested in getting money from foreigners, when theres 1.4 billion people domestically.
granted, the Chinese state DID make an attempt at engaging the world directly for awhile, and those efforts sucked shit. Confucius institutes, hypernationalist movies with weird foreign tokenism (The Great Wall, Wolf Warrior 2, probably some other crap not worth remembering) and the brief time Zhang Ziyi was let out her cage were all probably attempts to directly showcase CHINA AWESOME, to manifest failure.
Right now many China boosters are mainly antiwokes holding up the proximate enemies greatest threat as proof of the failure of their foe, not necessarily admiration for Chinese products or media. Chinese vidya and donghua has escaped the parties notice for now and is baller as fuck, but thats the domain of weebs, so obviously beyond cultured intellectuals such as ourselves.
I swear to all of you guys though on the bottom of my overweight ass, if you want to experience true China domination, go eat their supermarket sandwiches. Chinese supermarket chains on the mainland must have kidnapped the best Japanese food scientists and forced them to make unfairly good food, and it is shockingly price to quality effective. Something about supermarkets just seems indicative of Real Quality Of Life to my animal brain, and cracking the supermarket quick food aisle is what made me convinced Japan was a real country just like how the costco chicken is proof of US dominance.
Yeah businesses are notorious about their lack of interest in breaking into new markets with high disposable incomes.
All jokes aside, it's not like they don't try. They do. Sometimes successfully. But more frequently not. Which is a summary I could use for virtually all Chinese interactions outside of China.
I'll check them out.
Most media prioritize local first instead of hypothetical deep pocketed foreign markets. Its just the math of cultural familiarity and limited upside from investing in the tastes of foreigners: hollywood tried selling pro China stuff to break into the market and for that we got Pacific Rim Uprising, which lost domestic gross for negligible xibucks, just like Iron Man 3 or Transformers 3 failing to capture mainlanders with the power of supplicating. Similarly China or Japan also prioritize local markets first. Only Korean Hallyu really committed money to the attempt and it just helps that Koreans are already shamelessly shallow so everyone they promote is already good looking, unlike Japs who have the weird crooked teeth for their idols and weird 80s hairstyle for the guys.
Frequent failures at breaking to overseas markets is hardly unique to China, it just is thermostatically relevant because China is relevant. Organic niche successes lack state push, so they escape notice.
Though since you're mostly westerners here, I'll leave one weird tidbit for you: there is one specific niche that was being pushed state level, and to roaring success until about a month ago (maybe). The Thai Culture Ministry has been very lax with who they disburse funds to, and some money ended up flowing to Boy Love dramas, with little state invervention against this unexpected success. It is HUGE in womens circles that were starved for prettyboys eyefucking each other after China cracked down on danmsi few years ago, and I'm sure western women watch it in large but hidden numbers. The only reason asian prettyboy rotting of womens minds may be halted is because Heated Rivalry exists.
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Don’t forget that it took a LONG time for Japan to register foreign interest in anime as anything more than cut-price toons for kids. The Japanese didn’t start actively factoring foreign sales into their strategy until, what, 2016? They had to be pursued quite strongly by companies like Crunchyroll before they were persuaded that piracy could be parlayed into real money.
The average westerner of the 60s-90s probably had an idea of what they thought a Japanese man was like. Hard worker, very strict workplaces, dedicated to the company, etc. Strage customs, nice furniture, small apartments. Tokyo, bright lights, (possibly??) crazy night life?
I'd say, whether that was an accurate description or not, the Japanese culture had endorsed that meme. And that helps create a cultural story that outsiders can read.
If you asked a normie what an average chinese guy is like, I just don't think you get any of that. In 10 years? 20? Yeah it's probably a different story.
My dad in the 80s could probably go out with an Italian, a Japanese, a Singaporean and have some expectations about each of them. I don't think Mr Thompson from accounting could go out with a Chinese guy, today, and have much of a head start at all.
It's weird because obviously Chinese economics have arguably caught up to the west. But they haven't exported the chinese identity. If anything, which is my main point, they've damaged chinese identity with bungled attempts to insert themselves into it.
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