By this logic Taiwanese media must be super influential right？Give a me a break
Being a bottleneck means it is a necessity. But it says nothing about sufficiency. And Taiwan is not without its own bottlenecks in the semiconductor sector.
US social media platforms have no "international version"，the US version is international version，the platform follows US law and the content is US centric，US domestic news will always be front page.
Chinese social media platforms all have "international version"，the headquarter and datacenter of these "international version" is not located in China，they don't follow Chinese regulations nor the content has much to do with China.
The result of this is obvious，Chinese platform has much less power to project Chinese influence over the global compare to US platform. Their oversea operations are purely for profit，not much else.
Heck even Chinese games all have "international version"，there is nothing in Chinese digital space that has does not distinguish "domestic" and "international". Which all thanks to the great fire wall they are forced to do so
While your observations are sound here, the reasoning is wrong.
It was the domestic laws of the host countries not the GFW that force the Chinese companies to store their international user data outside of China. For the same reason, Microsoft, Apple, etc. have their Chinese user data stored inside China because they are required by the Chinese laws.
The US media do have an international version. It is called VOA.
Xi JinPing talked alot about establish "culture confidence". But to this date Chinese society is really struggling to establish culture confidence at home，let alone project softpower overseas.
Isn't this exactly why Xi wants to establish culture confidence? What are you complaining about?
