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PaperclipPerfector  3d ago (text post)   13158 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of February 16, 2026

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Probably not really enough meat on the bones here for Culture War thread but it also doesn't really fit anywhere else. I really wanted to talk about this year's Chinese New Year Gala put on by the Chinese government. For those that want to watch the Gala in its entirety, here's a playlist of the Gala in 4 parts.

I'm an ethnically Chinese person born in Mainland China and moved to America in my youth. This means that I'm celebrating Chinese New Year (or Lunar New Year or Spring Festival if you want to be more politically correct). For those that don't know, since the year 1988, the Chinese Media Group (state run broadcast company) have put on a Gala that starts on New Year's Eve and runs into New Year's day. Generally, this is one of the biggest broadcasting events of the year in China. Every year the shows include traditional performances mixed in with skits, modern songs, and other segments. I myself have very fond memories of watching past Galas with my family, including cousins and grandparents. While the Gala is always popular, the general consensus is that they have not been as good as the years have gone on. In my memory, the 2000s had the best Galas by far. (The Gala really misses Zhao Benshan since his ousting.)

That's all background information about the Gala, and as you might be able to tell, by this point, the Gala is completely engrained into Mainland culture. If you refer to "春晚," most mainlanders know exactly what you're talking about. What makes this year's especially interesting to me, however, is that it seemed to act as a coming out party of sorts. In the same way that the 2008 Olympics acted as a way for China to display its thorough modernization, it's clear to me that the Chinese government wanted this gala to do the same. From the kung fu robots to Lionel Richie and Jackie Chan duetting We Are the World, the entire show seemed to radiate something akin to menace and arrogance (also funny to me because two of the five singers in the video are coming from countries that are actively committing ethnic cleansings). Online, there's been a lot of talk regarding the comparisons between the Chinese backflipping robot and the Tesla backflipping robot, and it seems that those in the Party were specifically trying to rebut some of the criticisms of the Chinese robot. The feeling was especially clear with the duet. To me, it was saying "We are so rich and powerful now that we can incorporate a core part of American culture into our own Gala as a part of our propaganda efforts." China always tried to incorporate western performers in their acts as a way to boost their own prestige (one obvious example is The Great Wall featuring Matt Damon, Willem Dafoe, and Pedro Pascal). And westerners used to look at these attempts with bemusement when China was still seen as a second-rate power, but I think the mood very much changes now that China is quickly gaining legitimacy as a viable alternative to American hegemony.

All of this is obviously coming on the heels of the multitudes of criticisms that have been levied at America, Americans, and the American government. Much ink has already been spilt regarding the obvious decline of America as a power and the rise of China as America's rival. This attempt at display of cultural power is especially stark when contrasted with the recent speeches at the WEF. Everyone seems to be in a very Chinese part of their lives as the Chinese government has seemingly succeeded in their online marketing (propaganda) campaign to convince the wider world that China is an advanced Eastern country, on par and perhaps surpassing South Korea and Japan. A (long) while ago, I made a review of Ne Zha 2 and at the end, I wondered whether eastern cultural dominance would continue. It seems that the answer is firmly "Yes." Not only will eastern cultural dominance continue, but Chinese culture, which had notably lagged behind in the past, is taking up more of the cultural space. And whereas South Korea and Japan are explicitly friendly nations, what happens to America and Americans if Chinese culture becomes dominant? Unfortunately, from my perspective, the future is not bright. It's by no means hopeless, but the collapse of American cultural hegemony is just another crack in the dam.

Side note: I'll talk about a childhood Gala memory. When I was a kid, my favorite parts of the Galas growing up were always the 小品s. These are ~15 minute humorous stage sketches that generally convey some form of wisdom at the end. When I was a kid, Zhao Benshan was a mainstay at almost every single Gala. He's from the North East region of China (formerly known as Manchuria, though Chinese people don't like that name nowadays) which is the same region of China that I'm from. He spoke with an exaggerated accent North Eastern accent that I also speak Chinese with, including the colloquialisms and slang. He honestly put North Eastern Chinese culture on the map. I'm not exaggerating when I say that he built a small media empire during the aughts and early 10s, with nationally syndicated TV shows, live shows, and even international tours. For about 20 years, he was present at almost every New Year's Gala, and he'd always perform a sketch, which would be one of the highlights of the entire show. Recently (when Xi JinPing ascended as Chairman) he was ousted due to supporting the wrong political faction. Now he's relegated to the North Eastern part of China as a local celebrity. The Gala dearly misses his presence, as the quality of the sketches after his ousting has taken a downturn. I'll share some of his greatest hits at the Gala, but unfortunately, many of the sketches don't have subtitles and are incredibly hard to translate. These sketches rely on wordplay, cultural references, and specific knowledge to be funny so as to be nearly incomprehensible to someone who doesn't understand Chinese, and especially the North Eastern dialect of Chinese. For myself, it really is impossible to overstate how important he was to the New Year's Gala.

The 小品s (short comedy basically) haven’t been worth anyone’s time since Zhao left. He’s genuinely a genius. He almost single-handedly raised my opinion of northeasterners, even though a lot of his work is admittedly a bit crass.

He wasn’t ousted only because he supported Bo Xilai. He was ousted because the northeastern provinces went through a near-total societal breakdown after the reforms of the 90s, which, since you’re from there and emigrated, are probably familiar with. It’s a heavy-industry economy, largely reliant on state subsidies, and when that structure collapsed during the reform unemployment exploded. The 80s and 90s saw widespread violence and gang activity.

And he was there, running a media empire. That alone suggests his hands probably weren’t clean. I love him, but I don’t really want to know what he was up to in those years.

I live in the Sinosphere and have the Mandarin skills of a trained monkey and/or determined 5 year old. I admire Chinese culture a lot and I try to visit the Mainland a couple times a year for random meanderings.

I'm pretty skeptical of actual Chinese cultural exports leaking into the West, even as somebody who watched more Chinese-language films last year in Cinema than English ones. Bit of a disconnect with what's acceptable, plus the Chinese culture seems a lot more insularly-focused than like Korea actively trying to engender more widespread appreciation and adoption.

I'm pretty skeptical of actual Chinese cultural exports leaking into the West, even as somebody who watched more Chinese-language films last year in Cinema than English ones. Bit of a disconnect with what's acceptable, plus the Chinese culture seems a lot more insularly-focused than like Korea actively trying to engender more widespread appreciation and adoption.

There's also the obvious geopolitical aspect behind this, with the international viewpoint of Mainland China being quite obviously contaminated by the fact that it's a major world power that straight-up does not want to be a part of the American geopolitical sphere and often shows off hostility towards it (and vice versa). Your average layman's knowledge of China gets mediated through all of these incentive structures and as a result it's still pretty much a summary of the worst that could be found, often taken out of context. China is often perceived as a Stalinist state with little to no cultural value, and stuff that comes out of there gets viewed with a sort of default suspicion.

This isn't limited to artistic exports, either. People seem capable of perceiving China only through the lens of its government. It's still very common for people to suggest that any kind of indigenously Chinese culture has been all but destroyed on the mainland because of the Cultural Revolution, that religion and culture is all but impossible under the totalising purview of the CCP, and maintained only on the fringes of the diaspora in places like Taiwan or Southeast Asia. Yet I’m a Malaysian Chinese who spent 16 years of my life embedded in that community, and yet in the span of two weeks in China, I saw a shockingly large amount of traditional religion and culture at least on par with what I saw in Southeast Asia; if it's anywhere close to dead in Mainland China then clearly my lying eyes deceive me.

So I would agree that China's public perception isn't close to being anywhere near positive yet; this is changing, but the international perception of China has a long ways to go before people stop seeing it as a scary authoritarian enemy-state.

China will possibly suffer from something like a resource curse with their cultural exports. They have such a colossal domestic market that they simply don't need to think about international markets. Nezha 2 can make 2 billion just from China, so why would they care if it doesn't even earn 5% of that overseas?

That might also explain why gaming is so far the one area that is having some breakouts. Something like Black Myth couldn't rely on Chinese games alone due to the relative size of the middle class, a culture that is still hostile to video games, and a party that is hostile.

The sheer scale of Chinese domestic consumption of cultural stuff is pretty striking. I was in Chongqing a couple weeks ago meandering aimlessly and even with the recent hype, even the most touristy areas where at most like 2% obvious foreigners.

Of course there's also a lot of tourism by overseas Chinese and I did run into some Singaporeans and American Chinese, but out-and-out foreign tourism is a small rounding error for China it seems

Basically yes. I mean there is a level of cope for sure among the Chinese for how poor our cultural export is, which needs some correction, at least to be able to attract our cultural siblings in East Asia, but it’s always nice and comforting to know that 1/5 of humanity enjoyed it anyways regardless of how well it does outside of our niche. Maybe American perception of China actually matter, idk, but what exactly is the point for e.g. Serbians to love or hate us?

What counts as the Sinosphere? My impression would be Singapore and Taiwan, leaving aside mainland China. I'd struggle to describe Korea or Japan or most of SEA with that moniker, anymore than France and Germany are part of the Anglosphere. You don't need to dox yourself, I'm genuinely curious as to what counts.

I live in Malaysia in a Chinese-speaking household in a Chinese-speaking gated community in a suburb that's mostly Chinese who've been here for 100+ years. Whilst the Chinese ethnics only make up like 30% of the country and don't have direct democratic power I think it's pretty clearly in the Sinosphere. If anything in terms of 'preservation of traditional Chinese culture' SEA-Chinese are probably more religious and ritual-observing.

Sinosphere in common parlance includes Korea, Japan, and Vietnam i.e. anywhere that Literary Chinese was at one time the language of high culture.

Restricting it to areas that speak Chinese today would indeed only leave Mainland China, Hong Kong and Macau, Taiwan, Singapore, and parts of Malaysia and Burma.

My impression of such galas, and I'm going off this third-hand, is that they are more attempts to demonstrate "We have McDonalds at home". That China now has enough native talent and ability to put on glamorous entertainment spectacles that they don't need to import Western (or Korean, or Japanese) culture, they can copy or generate that themselves now. They have robots! They have tech and glitz and glamour!

It's self-sufficiency, it's boasting their own culture and history, it's "we don't need the Olympics, we have the Asian Games" and so on. Making their own versions of Top Gun movies and Second World War movies (the evil Japanese invaders seem to be popular right now) and movies about the roots of the Glorious Revolution.

The American equivalent seems to be the Superbowl Half-Time Show which generated all the online comment. Probably not as overtly nationalistic an exhibition, but seems to be running along the same lines of "is this Americanness?"/"is this Chineseness?"

"we don't need the Olympics, we have the Asian Games" and so on.

That seems like an odd thing for the ChiComms to be saying in 2026, when they seem to be pretty competitive in most of the Winter Olympic events. They aren't winning Gold everywhere, but they had a few events that were nearly sweeps, and it seems like every event I see a PRC competitor on the broadcast.

The Super Bowl halftime show is not a big deal, particularly- the commercials are actually a bigger deal in mainstream culture- thé halftime show is intended as a sop to get a demographic which doesn’t normally watch a whole football game to pay attention(in the past this was often women but bad bunny was definitely aimed at an ethnic group that likes a different sport).

The Super Bowl halftime show peaked in the early 2000s, since 2016 or so there just aren't acts universally big enough to fit the bill.

The excitement over "ooh, who is going to do the Big Ad? What will it be about? Woke or traditional?" is, I submit, the essence of Americanness.

Again, thé superbowl commercials are a much bigger deal for all that.

Very slick production values. What does the Gala cost?

China has also been projecting themselves via their ML models: SeeDance, Kimi, GLM, Qwen, DeepSeek. While (arguably) their language and coding models lag behind Western SoTA (Codex and Opus), they beat last year’s SoTA, and the best open weights models are mostly if not all Chinese. Currently SeeDance is the best video model.

There are also lots of Chinese AI labs getting papers in top international conferences.

I don't think much has really changed with Chunwan. Nationalist posturing has always been part of the show, that part is nothing new, and the same thing for washed-up western celebs - Lionel Richie and Westlife haven't been relevant for decades. The robots were kind of cool but showcasing China's strength is part for the course.

On the broader point I agree that the "China is an advanced country now" narrative is working, and part of that is due to propaganda, but it's also pretty much true. If anything, attraction to Chinese culture is well behind where it "should" be if it was based on national strength.

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