We can see the cracks starting to show in US military and economic hegemony. To be sure, they’re still the most powerful country in the world, but they can obviously no longer take on the rest of the world combined like they could in the 90s.
But more insidiously, the US still seems to be the hegemonic hyperpower in terms of cultural output. Even countries that are geopolitically at odds with the US happily and ravenously consume its art, entertainment, and literature, and to a lesser extent, those from loyal vassals of the US such as Japan, south Korea, and Western Europe.
It’s not just due to reach. I feel that cultural output from the US (and vassals) is genuinely more creative, technically advanced, complex, innovative, and prolific than cultural output from the rest of the world. As someone of Chinese descent who doesn’t strongly identify with American culture, this weighs on me heavily.
I’ll compare American and East Asian cultural output since that’s what I’m most familiar with.
Hollywood cinema is obviously the gold standard the world over. American films such as The Matrix, Blade Runner, and Fight Club are full of symbolism, innovative cinematography, and complex narratives. Korean films such as Snowpiercer, Parasite, and Oldboy are not far off. In comparison, the top Chinese movies such as The Wandering Earth 2 and The Battle at Lake Changjin are rather simplistic and don’t necessarily have a lasting cultural impact, even in China.
Chinese TV is pretty good, with hits like Nirvana in Fire and Reset. But there has been no Chinese series with the wide reach, critical acclaim, innovative and sophisticated narratives, and lasting cultural impact of American series like Breaking Bad, Star Trek, The Sopranos, and Friends, or Korean series like Squid Game. The average Chinese person has heard of Friends, but only a vanishingly-small number of Americans have heard of Nirvana in Fire.
Chinese pop music is largely samey-sounding ballads. Listen to one of the songs by Li Ronghao or Joker Xue, and it could’ve been released today, a decade ago, or two decades ago. In contrast, Western and Korean pop music are constantly evolving and trying new things. Even more creative Chinese artists like Lexie Liu, Hyph11e, South Acid Mimi, and Absolute Purity are largely following established trends and not really setting new trends. Chinese music has no answer to jazz, rock ‘n’ roll, hip-hop, and house. The most identifiably Chinese music simply uses traditional instruments, but there’s nothing particularly groundbreaking or creative about mashing folk instruments with existing pop music. K-pop, J-pop, and even LatAm, West Asian, and Indian pop have immediately identifiable sounds, whereas most C-pop sounds like it could’ve been made anywhere at any time. C-pop has little appeal even in places like Hong Kong. If you look at the HK charts, they’re dominated by foreign artists like NewJeans Jungkook, Yoasobi, and Taylor Swift, with a small handful of HK and Taiwanese artists, but not a single mainland artist. That seems really shameful to me.
Japanese manga and American comics are considered the gold standard, with Korean manhwa a solid third. Meanwhile, Chinese manhua suffers from amateurish art, clunky pacing, unlikeable and selfish main characters, and boilerplate, tropey plots. If you thought isekai was overdone, wait until you see the endless cultivation stories in manhua. It’s kind of embarrassing, really.
It’s a similar story with literature, video games, and animations.
So, why is there such a large discrepancy in the quality of cultural exports coming from the US, Japan, south Korea, and Western Europe vs the rest of the world? Is it simply that these countries are richer so more people have the opportunity to pursue art, and studios have larger budgets? Is art like technolgical advancement in that you have to build up the know-how from the ground up? Or is there some cultural or governmental aspect in countries of the International Community™ that genuinely fosters creativity?
People often talk about this in terms of soft power, but imo what’s even more important is cultural self-confidence. If domestic art or art from friendly cultures is good enough to satisfy one’s own needs instead of having to import everything from countries that want to subjugate your own people, I think that would greatly boost collective well-being, sense of identity, and mental health.
On a personal note, this has been a nearly obsessive worry of mine for the last year or so. I’ve tried talking to a therapist about it but they just suggested that I try to stop identifying as Chinese and start identifying as American. Not very helpful advice. I don’t really have anyone to talk to this about, so I hope I can start a discussion here.
I actually agree with you on this one that it’s a very important issue and one that needs to be corrected sooner than later. The revolution will be exported culturally in the end.
I suspect that this is the case, as the end products we see are not the result of a single artist, but of the industry behind it. Even discovering and nurturing talent is a pipeline that takes decades to develop. I see raw quality when I read some Chinese webnovels (Release That Witch, Lord of Mysteries) but the lack of experienced editing is glaringly obvious. Japanese mangakas like Toriyama had talented editing team behind him, but there is no Chinese equivalent currently. This gap becomes greater when it comes to bigger productions with more moving parts such as music or film. These structures take a long time to mature, and China didn’t have enough time to develop them yet.
I think you’re underselling Chinese videogames though or you’re discounting mobile games. I’d say that half of quality mobile games come from China. The Chinese esports scene is much more developed than the West and I consider it to be a cultural output as well. Not so coincidentally, these are industries with a much shorter history than manga or film.
You’re right, I wasn’t considering mobile games. Got any good ones that aren’t just cash grabs or ports of existing IP?
I’m aware that there are solid games with some connection to China, such as FTL: Faster Than Light and My Time at Portia. There’s of course also Genshin Impact and the upcoming Black Myth: Wukong, but I find it hard to be excited about them anymore since my SO shat on them really hard, the former for “being a rip-off of BoTW” and the latter for “being a rip-off of Elden Ring and Dark Souls and using unoriginal, centuries-old IP.” TBH I think they have a point.
Woah, I didn’t know FTL was Chinese! That’s wild to me
I think they are being too hard on Black Myth: Wukong or just forgetting that Dark Souls didn’t spawn from Miyazaki’s womb fully formed, culturally speaking. It’s like 80% a splicing of Wagner and Berserk in terms of the story and setting.
I think it’s from a legally Chinese studio founded by a Chinese-American and white American. I’ll take that as a W since attracting foreign talent is a legitimate development strategy.
what’s Wagner?
Richard Wagner, the proto-fascist who was also an immensely dedicated and somewhat skilled composer whose work is extremely influential in lots of western media – and I surprisingly don’t mean this as a dig, a lot of musical theater’s more structurally interesting aspects came from or were heavily developed by him. He was rancid on a personal level and I disagree with a lot of what he said artistically even to the limited extent it can be separated from his bigotry, but some of his central ideas and his Ring Cycle as a proof-of-concept of those ideas are very good.
I’ve played both Genshin and BOTW. Yes, Genshin heavily borrowed from BOTW. Genshin still has changed and added significantly more to the BOTW formula that I’d say it merits a playthrough. Art was always meant to be an iterative process and the idea of copying and stealing became popularized because art became a commodity to be exploited, not shared and explored mutually.
Some notable Chinese gachas include Arknights and Honkai Starrail, which are considered to be superior to their Japanese or Western counterparts in the genre.
I was gonna make my own top level comment until I saw this. I think a lot of what you mentioned in the post is mostly a symptom of how cultural hegemony works, rather than Chinese people being uncreative or not knowing how to do artistic expression. The perfect example is Genshin - the story is rich and intriguing, although simplified for a younger audience. The music, graphics, and scenes are honestly some of the best I have seen in video games. From a technical perspective, and as cliche/delusional as this sounds, I think this is the pinnacle of video games. Working within the constraints of mobile devices, they created this massive world with gorgeous graphics and used “photorealistic” techniques that even AAA games don’t use, all while not compromising on the unique art-style. I think the gacha format and it being a BOTW “clone” do limit it in the dialogue/gameplay department, but outside of these two facets it demonstrates “high-level art”. There are scenes in the game that can be considered “cultural export”, like the Divine Damsel of Devastation (Spoilers!) which exposed millions of western players to Chinese Opera for the first time and practically resurrected it, and we will probably see more with the upcoming Lantern Rite character Ga Ming for CNY. In the west people simply do not get to see this in other forms of media because of American hegemony, but it exists, and breakthrough games like Genshin demonstrate it.
just wanna also add that kpop has a whole subsphere of chinese artists
I found a YouTube link in your comment. Here are links to the same video on alternative frontends that protect your privacy: