This really isn’t true. Chinese have songs, they have popular music groups, many like K pop or K dramas, many like costume dramas or going for a night out to sing karaoke. Soccer is really popular, basketball is too for some strange reason. Heck, just say you are American in Beijing and taxi drivers will most definitely ask you about the NBA (if you can speak Chinese).

There is a lot of selection bias in generalizing about a culture via its world travelers :).

The state really sucks at propaganda though, so it shouldn’t be surprising that efforts like this are filled with lots of cringe. It definitely shouldn’t be considered pop culture.