China’s soft power push gains ground as entertainment exports surge

[Mista]

Even as an ethnic Chinese I still consume more Japanese/Korean entertainment content on a daily basis. I ask around and it's the same for my friends and colleagues. I mean just take a look at Netflix top 10 in SG, it's dominated by Korean dramas. Even in non-Asian countries they can still be popular, which is quite impressive for non-English dramas.

When I was a kid I consumed Taiwanese Mandopop like Jay Chou/JJ Lin, Taiwanese idol dramas, and Chinese period dramas.

Nowadays the only Chinese-language entertainment content I consume is Douyin, the Chinese version of TikTok? But for most people outside of China they use the international version of TikTok instead, which ironically is dominated by American content creators and basically close to zero Chinese content creators. Because of self-imposed isolation to separate the domestic and international version , a Chinese social media platform is now helping to spread American soft power around the world lol.

 

[REhorror]

beards = medieval

clean shaven = modern

Why can't it be both?
In Vietnamese drama, the old man has beard.

 

[beijingwalker]

Tik Tok is a social media platform

Social media now is everything.

 

[Leishangthem]

Is this true? From a pure profibility issue, is k-pop and k-drama actually stronger than japanese manga/anime/games, or even chinese games from Tencent?
I actually very much doubt this, since the video games market are bigger than the music and drama market, even bigger than the movies market nowadays, and the biggest gaming companies in the world right now are Tencent, Sony and Microsoft, and none of them are korean companies.

Also, the only time I see korean films with beard nowadays is the Admiral series with Yi-Shun-shin.

Is this a defiency in modern chinese genetics?
And no, some beards in that poster are definitely real.

?
why are you even comparing kpopkdrama to manga /anime?

Both are totally different streams,one's on physical human artistic form another as illustration & digital animation.
Both are multi-billion dollar streams , and have huge cultural impact ,Korea and Japan are making easy money from their culture content consumers,and spreading softpower like no other nation.
Korea dominates music/tvdrama & japan anime /manga.
Korea also rules webtoon I have to say.

Do you think it is a reasonable way to expand soft power?
Recently, China imported a lot of athletes from abroad: from Africa, South America, North America, Europe. Provides green cards, money, housing, and women to foreign athletes. Encourage foreign athletes to marry Chinese women and have many mixed children.

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How's hiring overseas talent for gold in sports related to soft power entertainment export?

Personally I totally despise China hiring foreigners for gold,this makes China look like a joke,we don't see korea hiring foreigners for gold in ice hockey.

Chinese lack nationalism and many thing from koreans I gotta say. Koreans would never tolerate a bunch of foreigners representing their ice hockey team.

 

[REhorror]

?
why are you even comparing kpopkdrama to manga /anime?

Both are totally different streams,one's on physical human artistic form another as illustration & digital animation.
Both are multi-billion dollar streams , and have huge cultural impact ,Korea and Japan are making easy money from their culture content consumers,and spreading softpower like no other nation.
Korea dominates music/tvdrama & japan anime /manga.
Korea also rules webtoon I have to say.

They are all cultural exports, and they are not unique among their peers.
You are saying Korean culture is the strongest right now, yet japanese video games and some chinese video games easily make more than the entire K-pop/K-drama industry altogether.

This is where the doubt comes from, if Korea culture force is indeed strong, evidently there would be more consumption/profitability.

 

[Leishangthem]

They are all cultural exports, and they are not unique among their peers.
You are saying Korean culture is the strongest right now, yet japanese video games and some chinese video games easily make more than the entire K-pop/K-drama industry altogether.

This is where the doubt comes from, if Korea culture force is indeed strong, evidently there would be more consumption/profitability.

Why are you stressed on korea? both korea and japan are in much successful league in soft power projection.

BTS alone makes 4billion of USD for Korea annually the whole hallyu is tens of billions out of nothing.

Even if Tencent game made big revenue, there's hardly impactful Chinese culture export like a tv drama or anime ,where protagonists are Korean/Japanese showcasing societal issues and appeal of their respective nations.
EVen in genshin impact, the characters are from various ethnicity , in a fantasy land hardly Chinese. How can that be same as the frenzy of bts filling huge baseball stadiums in every major American city ? or squid games, topping paid streaming services in almost every nation with digital content?

China is also trying to achieve korea/japan lvl of culture export,by releasing Chinese dramas on their own platform,iqiyi,wetv,etc etc . And they are doing ok job, especially in developing nation and sea. But to get up there,they have to fix many things.

If China don't improve its entertainment culture content quality, the Chinese will resort to consuming American,Korean and other foreign cultural content and get brainwashed by foreign(western) ideology. That would pose great risk to China's stability & Chinese economy as America/ korea would easily make millions from Chinese audience while contributing nothing to china but more distraction to youth and siphoning their parent's hard-earned income.
If local cultural and entertainment contents aren't up to par with west and unable to keep the youth engaged,Chinese youth will lose faith,national pride and confidence in their culture and state. They will worship foreigners and act like bts which asslicks Us military and insulted Chinese athletes in his sns . It's detrimental for China if it fails to pull the quality of local entertainment to preserve the minds of the youth .

 

[REhorror]

Why are you stressed on korea? both korea and japan are in much successful league in soft power projection.

BTS alone makes 4billion of USD for Korea annually the whole hallyu is tens of billions out of nothing.

I'm doubting that Korean culture is the strongest.

EVen in genshin impact, the characters are from various ethnicity , in a fantasy land hardly Chinese. How can that be same as the frenzy of bts filling huge baseball stadiums in every major American city ? or squid games, topping paid streaming services in almost every nation with digital content?

If we are talking about Genshin, it easily makes more money than Squid Game, not sure about BTS, but I check that Genshin made 3 billion USD in less than 2 years, so that's already a faster rise than BTS. Meanwhile, Pokemon, the single Japan IP, is $95 billion in worth.
After all, Squid Game is Netflix, which is one platform against many. In fact, many korean contents rely on Netflix, if Netflix go under, it will heavily affect their distribution.

 

[Leishangthem]

I'm doubting that Korean culture is the strongest.

If we are talking about Genshin, it easily makes more money than Squid Game, not sure about BTS, but I check that Genshin made 3 billion USD in less than 2 years, so that's already a faster rise than BTS. Meanwhile, Pokemon, the single Japan IP, is $95 billion in worth.
After all, Squid Game is Netflix, which is one platform against many. In fact, many korean contents rely on Netflix, if Netflix go under, it will heavily affect their distribution.

Korea has many dozens of groups that make billions for korea yearly.It's very easy money,they release album,fans from all over the world ,mainly chinese bulk buy millions of cd to make their fav rank high on charts.

In terms of revenue, Gaming industry is generally bigger than movie/ drama+ music industry combined.And china does have the potential to dominate this sector as I said.
But the effectiveness of soft power culture projection through games is much less than tv drama,anime,manga,webtoon.
Chinese novels are actually pretty popular, may be more than Japanese or Korean novels,that's another sector to china's advantage I guess.China has some top tier webtoons too.

So what we are talking about is kind of different. I'm talking about quality and impact rather than pure revenue since it's about entertainment export and soft-power not just pure revenue.

 

[REhorror]

Korea has many dozens of groups that make billions for korea yearly.It's very easy money,they release album,fans from all over the world ,mainly chinese bulk buy millions of cd to make their fav rank high on charts.

In terms of revenue, Gaming industry is generally bigger than movie/ drama+ music industry combined.And china does have the potential to dominate this sector as I said.
But the effectiveness of soft power culture projection through games is much less than tv drama,anime,manga,webtoon.
Chinese novels are actually pretty popular, may be more than Japanese or Korean novels,that's another sector to china's advantage I guess.China has some top tier webtoons too.

So what we are talking about is kind of different. I'm talking about quality and impact rather than pure revenue since it's about entertainment export and soft-power not just pure revenue.

BTS is by far the biggest k-pop group in Korea, and their cd sale is considered high in millions. Meanwhile, japanese and chinese video games sell millions regularly while costing more than music cd. In fact, I bet most k-pop fans just watch the clip on Youtube.

And revenues define impact because it means popularity with the common folk. By that metric, the strongest soft power by far is video games.

Squid Game won the Emmy this year, it's nice until you discover Emmy viewership has decreased year on year, with this year being the worst. What kind of impact is that?

 

[Leishangthem]

BTS is by far the biggest k-pop group in Korea, and their cd sale is considered high in millions. Meanwhile, japanese and chinese sell millions regularly while costing more than music cd. In fact, I bet most k-pop fans just watch the clip on Youtube.

And revenues define impact because it means popularity with the common folk. By that metric, the strongest soft power by far is video games.

Squid Game won the Emmy this year, it's nice until you discover Emmy viewership has decreased year on year, with this year being the worst. What kind of impact is that?

I don't think you have much idea about the music industry,artists in china or japan don't sell millions of CDs regularly,that period is over,BTS, THE BEST album was the highest selling album in japan 2021 with 992,837 sold.
And top 3 artist making most revenue in China is Taiwanese Jay Chow, hk- Eason Chen and singaporean JJ lin.

. And the thing that make kpop artist like bts different from a Arashi or GEM is,they get massive sales and tour revenue from global audience,bts got 730k first week sales from china alone in 2020 and 230 million USD from global tour ,while top artist in china/japan only makes money from local audience,it's in-house circulation ,kind of pointless for the national economy.
Plus the impact of bts on Korea's tourism, soft power appeal is massive. Like it or not,hallyu changed the image of asian suffering from Hollywood slander.

What's more important than Emmys is the number of people that enjoy Korean dramas and movies. In their head, Korea is the cherished land next to Nirvana. Their band power and cultural appeal projection among genz is something even the west is envious of.China can learn from that,in terms of quality control and gov support in ent .industry.

 

[REhorror]

I don't think you have much idea about the music industry,artists in china or japan don't sell millions of CDs regularly,that period is over,BTS, THE BEST album was the highest selling album in japan 2021 with 992,837 sold.
And top 3 artist making most revenue in China is Taiwanese Jay Chow, hk- Eason Chen and singaporean JJ lin.

. And the thing that make kpop artist like bts different from a Arashi or GEM is,they get massive sales and tour revenue from global audience,bts got 730k first week sales from china alone in 2020 and 230 million USD from global tour ,while top artist in china/japan only makes money from local audience,it's in-house circulation ,kind of pointless for the national economy.
Plus the impact of bts on Korea's tourism, soft power appeal is massive. Like it or not,hallyu changed the image of asian suffering from Hollywood slander.

What's more important than Emmys is the number of people that enjoy Korean dramas and movies. In their head, Korea is the cherished land next to Nirvana. Their band power and cultural appeal projection among genz is something even the west is envious of.China can learn from that,in terms of quality control and gov support in ent .industry.

In another words, the music industry is small.
I can't say I agree of in-house circulation when BTS despite all the efforts of singing, going abroad, still get upstaged by video games' revenues or in fact some anime's revenues like Pokemon or Dragon Balls.
The people who enjoy kdramas too, they pay a subscription to Netflix while Netflix itself is losing money hard.

As I have said, the effect of Korean culture is more hype than substance.

And I'm sorry but asian have had a presence in Hollywood since the days of Bruce Lee and the 7 Samurai.

 

[Maula Jatt]

Honk Kong alone was a mecca of soft power just couple decades ago

Unfortunately I don't know what happened, but HK nowadays is not the same

HK is the only city that can bring Chinese soft power to the same heights

 

[REhorror]

Honk Kong alone was a mecca of soft power just couple decades ago

Unfortunately I don't know what happened, but HK nowadays is not the same

HK is the only city that can bring Chinese soft power to the same heights

The transfer to China was messy and TVB never recovered.
At least the old shows were good.

 

[Leishangthem]

Honk Kong alone was a mecca of soft power just couple decades ago

Unfortunately I don't know what happened, but HK nowadays is not the same

HK is the only city that can bring Chinese soft power to the same heights

You might have fond sentiment for hk movies from 80s and early 90s but hk movies appeal don't work in 21st century.The Jackie Chan,Jet Li phase is gone ,so is chow yun fat gangster films which was popular in asia. The quality of Korean films increased to far greater lvl so as mainland china's. Hk never improved,because they basically made English/hollywood movie in Cantionese .HK movies blew up not just because of their advanced entertainment industry but also due to lack of competition from hallyu which set a new ceiling for quality .The talent crop of Korea and even China is much superior than what Hk has now.Though the Korean talent crop are at a class of its own.

China far surpassed,HK,Taiwan in softpower projection, only behind Korea in tv drama or movie.

 

[somsak]

Tik Tok is a social media platform, every country it's different.
I'm against it because it lowers attention span, short video formats create ADHD kids.


Uh, chinese/asian men can grow beard and body hair, what are you talking about?
Look at Guan Yu'sdepiction.
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Now imagine if he's shaved clean, that's Korean pop culture.

My friend play this game Romance of3 kingdoms from Tencent at age 40 years old, during weekday. He Made enough fortune to not working. He found out that his opponent is the super rich CEO of Thailand public company. The CEO paid almost 30,000USD to buy game items just to Win.