I think my issue is that I don't even think it's helping Chinese soft power at all, maybe for the diaspora, but that's really most of those who seems to care about the game being Chinese or having Chinese elements.
I hope you're right.
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- Thread starter bd popeye
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I haven't even watched Squid Game, just some clips, what does it even take from Japanese stuff?
It's benefit is to take a step or two in the direction of endearing foreigners to Chinese products, not necessarily to turn them into true Chinese. If you're using a Chinese product, you are benefitting China in some way, and at this stage that's the most important part.
Fanboys do have a positive effect in spruiking Chinese soft power, as their word of mouth is the best advertisement. See ElectricViking's videos on youtube about Chinese EV's, and take note of the foreign BYD fanboys.
If they love your product, they eventually start loving you.
That "gamification of blood sport as social commentary" genre was mostly invented and popularised by Japan, but it was mostly for domestic consumption, eg: Battle Royale, Kaiji. Other countries are able to take that idea and distill the essence out of it and come up with globally popular franchise. It first happened with Hunger Game then again with Squid Game. The fact that foreigners can make a more globally popular version of their idea annoy the Japanese to no end.
GI is just like that too.
If you want some ‘real’ influence, then the best way is to sit and wait. Cultural influence is made by the market. Those who are rich enough and have a big enough population, will create a huge market of their own culture, and make some good games and movies with their cultural characteristic. The majority of Chinese people just get rich enough to watch movies and play video games for no more than a decade. The demands for stories of our own in movies and video games are large, but the game companies and movie companies also need time to understand how to make stuff in our own culture.
Or, if you mean living style, sit and wait, too. We haven't created a totally different one yet. Maybe decades later, after several important technologies emerged in china, you can see how we Chinese people use these technologies to live in a better way first, just like the Americans did, and everyone just start to say that we should and will live in a Chinese way.
Soft power does not understand China.
In fact, soft power, is just what American academics claim it is. It is probably not connected to reality.
That list, would be thought of very differently in China, or in the Chinese mind.
The Chinese male is ridiculed in Western society, because he is perceived as a threat, because he has a sharp mind and is good at math.
The Chinese woman is a wanted object. Not sure why, but people lust after the Chinese woman.
If products are soft power, then China is the biggest exporter of soft power in human history. There is no bigger exporter than China trading with others.
Read somewhere that China had built 27 identical replicas of the Eiffel Tower.
The point is this.
The concept of soft power from the Western academic, there is an underlying message, which is this supposed soft power is suppose to change people.
That has no relevance, or very limited relevance to China.
China's history is different. If there is something good, China takes it and adapts it, integrating it into Chinese civilization and society. It becomes Chinese.
Buddhism. There is Chinese Buddhism. There is Chinese Buddhism because it became Chinese.
Marxism. That became Marx-Engles-Lenin-Stalin-Mao Zedong thought-then-Deng get rich is glorious-Jiang-Hu-Xi thought. Marxism is Chinese now. How can it not be?
So, any soft power from the West, if China likes it, then China takes it, incorporates it, and dissolves it. The original message is lost, and the only message left is the Chinese one.
The West cannot stand that. In their attempts to influence China, it appeared they made progress with soft power, but in the end, it is everywhere in China, and no where in China, at the same time.
China built 27 identical replicas of the Eiffel Tower. Why go to gay Paris when we can go to China to see that?
In fact EU is acting out a real life Hunger games at the moment
East Asian women in general. I'm sure we all had to deal with non-Asians lusting after our Asian girlfriends. Sometimes they look like they want to draw out their sword and slay me so they get to steal my girlfriend, but it's not a sword bearing society today so they don't get to steal my girlfriend in this way (or any other way, for that matter).