Chinese film, television, music

You have to wonder how does China even exist without being liked by the US? How is China the number two most powerful country in the world, threatening number one, the US, when it ranks so low in popular culture around the world? There's always excuses someone will make for exceptions. Remember singer Kris Wu? He had a new album that was going to be released but then his producers forgot his birthday was coming and decided to change the release date of his album in Asia to later on his birthday. They didn't change the date on US download sites. His fans went to those sites in North America to buy it and he beat Ariana Grande's same day released new album and Lady Gaga's songs on US charts. But that doesn't count because those were his Chinese fans not real people that bought it.

Is there a connection to why all the countries that think they're like by the West more than China are lower ranked in power than China...? Now you know why it's so important for the US to spread Western values to China because then the Chinese would value the same worthless values and not become a threat to the US.

Quan8410 said:

Technically Parasites is 2019 but only get globally famous in 2020 after all the awards including Oscar. Then South Korea has top 10 googled television shows in consecutive 3 years 2021, 2022, 2023. I don't see any Chinese shows in that list either, since 2019. Do you? And that's just South Korea, a tiny country not even in top 10 economy in the world. For a top2 economy, China need to do better.

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Oscar is rigged garbage and who gives a shit about most googled, US shows or celebs aren't rated after most baidu.

Earnings and viewership numbers are king. And in all respects China is far ahead of Korea, arguably only a bit or equally succesful as US.

US only has better performance despite being no2 economy today, because irrelevant of today, they've still had a large economy for longer than China has had theirs. Economy of scale stacks with time, today you have a few Chinese hits that bring in 100s of millions in sales per month. Give China 1-2 decades of continued economic lead and there will be a clear overweight of China owned media making up the market.

China is ahead of South Korea in entertainment if it counts its domestic market. But its domestic market is protected (there are restrictive quotas for foreign imports, especially Korean imports), which makes the comparison difficult to make directly. Not that there's anything wrong with protectionism - it's how China has historically nurtured emerging industries against incumbent foreign competition - but it does mean apples-to-apples comparison are a lot harder.

For this reason, when it comes to making these comparisons, I mainly look at export performance. China isn't as reliant as South Korea is on its export market (South Korean exports are 40% of its GDP, compared to 20% for China), but both are export-oriented countries that compete to dominate global industries. But what region should we look at? Clearly, Western regions are not the best comparison due to geopolitical hostilities, which have bled into every aspect of their cultural system. Similarly, Russia is a captive market due to Western sanctions, so not the greatest comparison, either.

So how about Southeast Asia? The region is ideal for comparing the performance of Chinese vs. South Korean cultural exports because it is relatively neutral and an important export market for both.

Let's look at some recent graphs of on-demand video content ():



Clearly, Koreans dominate the SVOD segment, but what's interesting here is that Chinese media producers are increasingly dominating the Freemium segment, which is likely going to become more important in the future as global media platforms trend towards freemium. Meanwhile, comparing to a in 2023:



We see that Chinese companies are making a lot of gains from between 2023 and 2024.

Consequently, my estimate of current affairs is that China is still behind South Korea on cultural exports, but that the future is bright as long as the government is supportive of pushing entertainment power globally. This means steps should be taken to encourage more investment in the sector, lower barriers of entry, and speed up processes of approval. South Korea has a national strategy around supporting its entertainment exports sector. China, if it wants to take the crown, should start a similar initiative.

Eventine said:

Consequently, my estimate of current affairs is that China is still behind South Korea on cultural exports, but that the future is bright as long as the government is supportive of pushing entertainment power globally. This means steps should be taken to encourage more investment in the sector, lower barriers of entry, and speed up processes of approval. South Korea has a national strategy around supporting its entertainment exports sector. China, if it wants to take the crown, should start a similar initiative.

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Also, create a nationwide effective content rating system so we can reduce censorship to sensible levels.

In 2021, the industry generated KRW 137.5 trillion in sales (up 7.2% year-on-year), exported USD 12.45 billion (up 4.4% year-on-year)
.
In 2021, Chinese game earned 16 billion overseas.


All SK cultural products exported is equal to 80% of those Chinese gacha games earned in global market.

Quan8410 said:

In 2019, the most searched movies in google is:

1) Avengers: Endgame
2) Joker
3) Captain Marvel
4) Toy Story 4
5) Aquaman
6) Once Upon a Time in Hollywood
7) Frozen 2
8) Green Book
9) The Lion King
10) Aladdin

Wandering Earth is not in top 10 and certainly not done well outside China except Netflix. It made only 6 millions outside China.

Genshin impact is certainly popular. But it is two otaku-oriented. Many people still mistake it is Japanese. Not blame them because it even has Japanese name (Genshin istead of Yuanshen).

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A little off-topic, but Genshin Impact really bothers me for just how much it was a blatent copy of Breath of the Wild. Yes it has some added skins and special effects that are different, but even basic play mechanics and landscape are derivative. The game creators really missed an opportunity to create something unique, for all the effort and resources obviously poured into it.

jnd85 said:

A little off-topic, but Genshin Impact really bothers me for just how much it was a blatent copy of Breath of the Wild. Yes it has some added skins and special effects that are different, but even basic play mechanics and landscape are derivative. The game creators really missed an opportunity to create something unique, for all the effort and resources obviously poured into it.

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Copy what exactly? Because they don't look the same, they don't play the same. I'm curious, copy what?

- different combat
- different movement
- different equipment system
- different mission structure
- different character and weapon system
- different story type
- different settings
- different art style

What part of Zelda could you say is similar outside of climbing and gliders? Something that almost all battle royals have now.

Breath of the Wild copied most of its systems from other games that came before it. Many reviews from 2017 consistently remarked how BotW adopted a lot of mechanics from western open-world RPGs. Especially Skyrim. And using the glider as a fast travel mechanic? That was shamelessly lifted right off Far Cry 3. It's literally the exact same thing. The Far Cry devs must be frustrated at seeing people constantly credit BotW for inventing the glider mechanic.

BotW was a very well made game, but it's mostly just a polished amalgamation of game mechanics borrowed from great games that came before it. People gave BotW waaaaaay too much credit for its supposed innovations.

Very few games are truly innovative. Everyone borrows heavily from someone else.

Saw an amusing comment while perusing box office forums about Moana 2's underperformance in China. A white commenter asked in light of Disney's other underperforming movies if Chinese parents even take their kids to the movies anymore. (Newsflash, they do and the underperformance of a franchise that has no defining characteristic other than Disney's first princess of Polynesian descent doesn't say otherwise) Someone else rightly pointed out that nowadays even if Disney is still the most popular, they're hardly the only producer of children's content and Chinese kids nowadays have many animated characters to follow.

Just a quick question for people more familiar with this, what animated characters are popular with Chinese children nowadays and what is the degree of Disney's current popularity amongst younger Chinese generations?

TPenglake said:

Just a quick question for people more familiar with this, what animated characters are popular with Chinese children nowadays and what is the degree of Disney's current popularity amongst younger Chinese generations?

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This surprised me but Boonie Bears: Time Twist made around $270 million USD in box office revenue this year. Note that it earned this much only releasing in mainland China (but to be fair, Boonie Bears is virtually unknown outside of China):

For reference, the new Garfield movie only made around $250 million globally (inclusive of China)