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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.
Does this exclude mobile games?
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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 international order 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 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. (There's also a clear absurdity with the idea that "Chinese culture" is this unified phenomenon that can be preserved via one tiny regionalised portion of emigrants primarily representing urban, coastal parts of Fujian and Guangdong which then hybridised significantly with foreign elements, but that's another thing entirely.)
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.
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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
They are only just starting to promote tourism again with the recent visa free travel deals. Luxury hotels that cater to tourists rather than business travellers (like the Amans) are still pretty empty in the mainland in my very recent experience. The English proficiency of hotel staff even at top international chains also varies much more than elsewhere in East Asia, yes including Japan (this may be true even if the average Chinese person speaks more English than the average Japanese, I couldn’t comment); there is always someone relatively fluent, but many staff aren’t. I don’t expect this but it obviously makes it harder for international tourists, whereas you can navigate as an American with no real experience in Asia in Tokyo with almost no problems. In Beijing and Shanghai having local coworkers around felt if not necessary then very useful.
China is also in that place where tourists looking for cheap beach vacations will naturally go to Thailand / Vietnam / etc over China. As a big, increasingly expensive and seasonal (in the sense that a lot of key cultural sites are in places that get [very] cold in the winter and [very] hot in the summer) destination, places like Beijing seem more like Moscow or St Petersburg before the war in terms of rich world tourism, in that they are going to attract primarily (upper) middle class, relatively well travelled people who want a glimpse into another culture rather than to go for a bucket list item, for food, because it’s cheap or for status (all the above have driven the recent Japanese tourism boom for example), which is a small proportion of the total.
Hainan is a thing, and China is actively promoting it as an inexpensive package tour destination.
Hainan's beaches don't really compare with Southeast Asian beaches though, its geography isn't very dramatic, and it also has a lack of heavyweight historical sights that could compare with an Angkor Wat or Borobudur Temple, being largely on the fringes of the Chinese state ever since it was incorporated into the empire. It was literally used as a strategic naval outpost and a prison island for exiled officials for much of Chinese history.
Most of the best Chinese historical sights are located deep in the north of the country, in provinces like Shanxi, Shaanxi, Gansu and so on, and while they are really spectacular to the point that I would say they're the best I've seen, the climate up there is indeed aggressively unforgiving. I visited in winter and it was cold, dusty and desolate to the point it felt practically Siberic; at one city I was in the temperature dropped below -18 degrees Celsius. I'm willing to endure these climates if it means I get to see all the historical sights by myself - even Chinese domestic tourists fuck off when everything is that cold - but your average tourist probably won't want to travel in these conditions, and probably would prefer to travel someplace with more English uptake, less spitting on the ground, international-standard tourist amenities, a better climate, and higher cultural status/clout within their social milieu.
I would say they're missing out on absolute peak, but people travel for significantly different reasons than I do I guess.
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I feel like getting your head around the mobile apps is the hardest part of linking into China. Once you've got Amaps/Wechat/Alipay sorted you're able to be a lot more functional as a tourist, plus the translator functions are pretty solid. I also find in my experience random Chinese people are more likely to see you as a positive novelty and actively help with translation/getting around, moreso than like Japan/Thailand where there's gigantic swarms of tourists and they've been relegated to pests. My opinion is heavily skewed by having some mandarin and enjoying randomly meandering around places, though.
Also agreed with the heat/cold aspects. I've been Shanghai twice in the last year and it was 40~ degrees Celsius last August and freezing temperature a few weeks ago, which I didn't expect. I do think the 5A system for tourism sites means that everything tends to be pretty accessible and developed (Even if that comes with questions about authenticity and what level of renovations are respectful). Also sheer scale of domestic tourism means that trying to get to the tier 1 spots like Beijing means all the (free) tickets to the Forbidden Palace and Tianamen square are taken in seconds. I do strongly recommend Nanjing for being a bit more relaxed, having a bevy of world class cultural sites and being a bit less busy than the Tier 1 cities.
China's incredibly affordable especially once you move outside of Shanghai/Beijing, but yeah I agree it'll generally attract more of the Upper Middle types. My recent trips I feel like I've seen way more random German/French tourists than anything else when it comes to laowai.
Yeah, @oats_son and I were reading a news article about a town near Fuji stopping its annual cherry blossom festival because all the tourists completely overwhelm the place. I feel kind of bad about it because I lived in Japan for most of a decade and got to enjoy it, but now literally everyone I meet tells me they want to go. I don't feel right discouraging them or being anything less than enthusiastic and helpful on their behalf, but there are far too many.
I'm honestly not the biggest fan of Japan. Prefer spending time in 2026 China, albeit I've only spent like 2 weeks in Tokyo and I hear good things about Osaka and the rest of the country so I plan to eventually circle through there so I might just be ignorant. It feels like everything is a swarm of random Gaijin.
I had a friend and his wife visit two years ago. I took them to a few places that were unique enough but also interesting (spending the night at Koyasan temple, for example) that many tourists still don't know about. Then we flew to my in-laws in the countryside of Kumamoto, where my friend and his wife got to be fully immersed in the life of a Japanese family. for a few days. Of course they only saw Mt Fuji through the plane window, and didn't see Hiroshima or Kyoto at all. But as tourism is now I see that as a win. Their photo reel is probably not as postcard-y as most who visit Japan, but fortunately they're the type people who don't crave social media validation.
If it's not too much to ask, I would actually be interested to hear what Japan recommendations you have for someone who is basically allergic to large crowds. In spite of my reservations about the tourism I'm not averse to the idea of a future trip to some lesser known destinations in the country, though I'd want to stay away from Kyoto, Fujikawaguchiko, Osaka and Tokyo entirely.
As such I've been scoping out the area for interesting places, and have been considering Koyasan, Nikko, Sado Island, Matsue/Izumo, Iya Valley and Hiraizumi; Miyajima looks nice too, but Itsukushima-jinja seems crowded on the best of days. It's a bit of a shame because Kyoto/Nara is so obviously the cultural centre of Japan with by far the highest concentration of history, and attractions seem to be rather far apart outside of there with a couple exceptions, but I can't justify travelling there considering the sheer amount of tourism the city receives. It's far beyond the actual capacity that it can realistically accommodate.
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This is the kind of thing that has stopped me from travelling to Japan thus far, in spite of travelling through the rest of the East Asian sphere. There's nothing I can't stand more than being crammed shoulder-to-shoulder with other tourists when travelling, and it degrades the experience so heavily I would rather not go. I have also heard from other family members who have travelled there that the tourist numbers are unbearable, which doesn't give me confidence. Everybody and their mother wants to travel there and seems to view it as the premier East Asian destination; travel is at least part-fashion, and Japan seems to be in vogue at the moment.
Having grown up in Asia, this kind of feels a bit like being a Canadian and seeing everyone suddenly wanting to go to Calgary for some reason. In my opinion, there are other places in the continent that are equally as beautiful and cultural without being swarmed with tourists, that in fact are undertouristed, and that actually need the income to assist with preservation; I would rather visit these instead of an already-overtouristed country that is so aggressively swamped with people that the tourism is probably contributing to xenophobia in Japan at this point. It's to the point that I would feel complicit in a sort of vandalism.
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In the end tourism is a choice. Bhutan still has a $100-200 per person per night tourist tax to discourage budget tourism and it works for them.
When people in places like Barcelona, Venice, Tokyo etc complain about tourism without stuff like this they are making an active choice to keep the money flowing at the expense of crowdedness etc.
I wouldn't be surprised if the new PM instituted such a thing. It's partly what I'm annoyed about - I lived there for most of a decade and the tourists are going to make it far more difficult to go back.
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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?
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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.
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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.
I think you could expand it a bit. Still some quite Chinese areas of Thailand/Indonesia even if they copped more out-and-out oppression. Plus enclaves around the world of varying degrees.
As I understand it Thailand forcibly assimilated the Chinese so now everyone pretends not to notice that all the rich are Chinese (although some assimilation did occur, a lot of intermarriage etc, certainly much moreso than with affluent overseas Chinese anywhere else in SEA).
The Thai-Chinese population is the largest diaspora population in the world, but previous iterations of the government essentially forced a bunch of surname changes and as much integration into broader Thai culture as possible. I think the intermarriage rate is higher for Thailand due to religious compatibility being easier than with Indonesia/Malaysia's muslim majorities since that's frequently a huge sticking point in actually formally marrying in those countries.
Religion is very relevant, especially in Malaysia, but the Chinese are still endogamous in Singapore, Indonesia and the Philippines despite substantial non-Muslim, non-Chinese populations in each of them.
Singapore has roughly the same base as Malaysia? I'm the white husband of a Malaysian Chinese woman and I receive considerably less side-eye at family gatherings than the Malaysian Indian husband of a distant cousin. There's pretty considerable color bias there which IMO doesn't really factor in as much with Thais who are still seen as part of the broader East Asian fraternity.
Even the passport bro Chinese boomers on the hunt for second-wife/mistresses from Malaysia and Singapore will generally go Thailand, Vietnam (admittedly Viet-Chinese as much as possible), Laos or whatever before they'd ever touch an Indian.
Indian women don’t really out marry at particularly high rates, the culture is more sexually conservative in any case. The main place one even sees particularly visibly promiscuous Indian women is probably the West where there is some second/third onward generation assimilation. India also has an extremely high gender imbalance, especially in the north, and a very strong continued tradition of true arranged marriage that has survived longer and stronger than almost anywhere else in the world.
Working class Thai, Filipino, Viet, even some Chinese and Japanese women married to blue collar or lower white collar white men are not uncommon in Western/Northern Europe and North America. But if I think about the not insignificant number of couples I know with an Indian woman and a white man, every single one is some kind of second gen PMC Indian woman and PMC white guy of the JD and Usha or “we met in medical residency” type. I think it’s hard to say that Indian women are undesirable when - outside of this small slice of the diaspora - they don’t appear to seek intermarriage the way many other Asian women do.
Ethnic SEAsians are pretty distinct from Chinese/northeast Asians ime; yes, there are plenty of swarthy Chinese but broadly speaking ethnic Indonesians or Malays and ethnic Han or most other Chinese, assuming the same dress and no other identifying markers, seem pretty easily distinguished, at least that’s my impression.
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