Chinese Soft Power and Media Discussion and Updates
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AssassinsMace
Lieutenant General
NeZha 2 was released during Chinese New Year so chances are low movies that early in the year would be remembered to get nominated but yes since it was from China there would be prejudice. I recommend don’t value it in the first place. All you do is give importance to the award if you do. You confirm it by complaining that what the West has is great and you want to be a part of it this you give them power for it. Like I mentioned recently in an anecdote in this forum where I said to a group of people I was with that I love a prime rib dinner. One white guy interjected I was admitting white people were superior to Chinese just from that. That’s why there are white people who will not admit anyone does anything better because to them that’s admitting they’re inferior. That’s how petty they are. The smallest little thing they’re going to turn into a mountain.
What you do is attack them for not being what they claim they are. You discredit them openly not support them by wanting to be accepted by them. They have a reputation to protect so they’ll either expose themselves when they can’t counter or they change their ways. Do nothing and they do nothing. You just give them power by letting them believe what they want to believe and you wanting to be accepted by them.
I just saw some picture of supposedly the best robots being produced out there compiled by some European group. Guess what? Most of them were from Europe that you never even heard of. Up there with the best humanoid robots… no Xpeng Iron. They had different categories and when it came to dogs… again mostly European.
Robots are the new penis measuring contest in the West. So do you think they’re ever going to admit that Chinese robots are any good? That’s why they’re not even acknowledging them. Look at Optimus’ latest embarrassing fumble yet when you hear them talk, they act like it’s the best out there.
You want a measurement of your greatness? Do it by how much they want to stop you. Western governments today want to stop the Chinese partly because of what they see with the progress of Chinese robots.
What you do is attack them for not being what they claim they are. You discredit them openly not support them by wanting to be accepted by them. They have a reputation to protect so they’ll either expose themselves when they can’t counter or they change their ways. Do nothing and they do nothing. You just give them power by letting them believe what they want to believe and you wanting to be accepted by them.
I just saw some picture of supposedly the best robots being produced out there compiled by some European group. Guess what? Most of them were from Europe that you never even heard of. Up there with the best humanoid robots… no Xpeng Iron. They had different categories and when it came to dogs… again mostly European.
Robots are the new penis measuring contest in the West. So do you think they’re ever going to admit that Chinese robots are any good? That’s why they’re not even acknowledging them. Look at Optimus’ latest embarrassing fumble yet when you hear them talk, they act like it’s the best out there.
You want a measurement of your greatness? Do it by how much they want to stop you. Western governments today want to stop the Chinese partly because of what they see with the progress of Chinese robots.
It's amazing to me how many people are resorting to VPN to maintain access. If DPP lose even half of their young urban female population due to this app ban, they're toast.
Nezha 2 had zero cultural impact in the west. It was completely China specific. Golden Globe or any other award shows in the US only care about cultural impact of movies in the US itself.
When a Chinese movie can earn 300-400 million dollars in US market, then it can legitimately claim to have some cultural impact there and then get the awards attention.
Or you can do another thing, just ignore US and western award shows. China should have its own awards that are as well-known as US. Why ask for recognition from your enemies?
That's because there is zero marketing and you have to buy it just to stream it.
It took decades for K-pop and Japanese anime to break through to western audiences and that's with full governmental support, the same will take time for Chinese content. It also doesn't help that a lot of the English dub for Chinese animated content is pretty poor, better marketing and localisation effort is definitely needed.
Where Winds Meet had very little marketing too, but through word of mouth ended up becoming a fairly solid hit in the West. I wrote this when the game came out in the other thread, but can repeat it here. It's all about the level of people's exposure to certain aspects of Chinese culture. Westerners already got their first taste of Wuxia 2 decades ago with Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon and Zhang Yimou's movies, combine that with C-Dramas, web novels, and cultivation donghuas, there's already a niche audience there for the genre. But more importantly even if Westerners don't follow that stuff, its not exactly alien to them, so when they heard WWM was a pretty solid F2P game they figured why not.
In contrast, Western audiences have had literally zero exposure to Chinese myth up to our current times. Shit, the closest maybe is the Kung Fu Panda film franchise haha. Black Myth Wukong was most people's introduction to Chinese myth and tbh, even if that game had fun gameplay and beautiful environments it did not make JTTW palatable to Western audiences at all. Nezha is kind of similar in that on top of most Westerners never having seen the first one, that franchise isn't exactly friendly to people who don't already have a background understanding of Chinese myth. But as always, as more of this stuff comes out, you'll get the niche audience first and finally a fanbase to the point where even if people don't follow it per se, they'll no longer think of it as alien so if a good IP comes out in that genre they'll be open to trying it out.
It's not really about cultural exposure; but industry exposure.
Why did Western gamers pay attention to Where Winds Meet? Because of Genshin. I'm not joking. Chinese gaming is on the map today largely due to the viral effect created by Genshin's astronomical success during the lock downs on a generation (or two) of Western gamers.
If you ask typical Western gamers what Chinese games they know of, chances are they will say Genshin, at least that's my experience and it's clearly the gate way drug for them into Chinese gaming.
Once Genshin went viral, they started paying attention to Chinese games, and now every new Chinese game releases gets some level of recognition and hype (even if Western games are still preferred), and that effect starts snow balling - Black Myth Wukong, Wuthering Waves, Marvel Rivals, Delta Force, Where Wind Meets, Phantom Blade Zero, etc. Combined with active influencer / marketing by Chinese companies, it's starting to have a real effect on the industry.
But with movies, when was the last time there was a block buster release from China in US theaters? There's no hype around Chinese movies in the West. No marketing. Influences are not talking about it. Nezha didn't even bother with an English dub on release - there's just no exposure, so it's not particularly surprising that Chinese movies are ignored in the West.
Also, I think many of the executives leading Chinese film studios are dinosaurs. Not at all like the young, ambitious, and globally aware executives leading Chinese gaming companies (particularly the newer companies like Mihoyo, Kuro, Hypergryph, etc.) They wouldn't know how to market to contemporary Western generations even if they wanted to. That's just a generational gap.