It's changing though. Wu Kong Black myth and even the top grossing film of last year was chinese animation. See the comments under the trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gsiAYjyiIBM. The film was apparently incredible.
The core culture of China is actually foundational to much of Asia. The stuff you see coming out of Japan and Korea is surface level aesthetics built on top of this foundation. You're probably thinking Nintendo, KPop and anime.
Once China makes the aesthetics just as good as other parts of Asia I can see China becoming a cultural power house. Even the mythology surrounding China historically in terms of say one thing like Wuxia is better than anything out of Korea, Japan or the west in my opinion.
Really in the end people are more attracted to the aesthetic presentation of everything. Japan does this really well while China has always been unskilled, crude and rough on the edges. But this is changing at a nearly breakneck pace.
I've had similar experience with film. Just compare the stuff coming out of Hong Kong today with what came out during the 80's and 90's.
Comedy is another thing I don't see go on export any time soon...
I actually don’t get what happened with Hong Kong. Stuff was good then it went bad. But in general it’s expected that stuff will be bad. Generally writing and story telling is the hardest to improve while production and special effects are easier.
The great story telling from China comes from its mythology and I feel China hasn’t yet found a method to depict this on screen without being too cheesy, fakeish or over the top.
I think this is why animation and video games work here temporarily. China will eventually get its act together.
But you also have to note there’s a shit ton of propaganda against China. I’m not even sure where it comes from given that we have freedom of press. you likely have no interest in the good stuff coming out of China likely because you don’t even know about it.
Think of it like this. You probably don’t think of BYD at all. Most Americans don’t. But to the rest of the world it’s a superior car to Tesla. And cheaper. It’s like Americans have some propaganda veil pulled over their eyes and I have no idea where it’s from. This absence of consideration of BYD is very similar to what Americans think of China. It’s just a very inaccurate perspective and full of holes.
Also a side note. Nobody inside China or Asia really gives a shit about Seinfeld, Sex and the city or friends. I love Seinfeld and friends but that's because I'm American. Outside of this culture those shows are just garbage. You need to look at the things with true world wide appeal across all cultures. Something like Avengers End game, which was an international phenomenon. (I know there's a lot of snobbish types who don't like it and I can understand why as it's not very sophisticated and it is a little too popular)
Anyway, China has yet to have something like Avengers End game. Or Star wars even. But out of all the countries in the world, it has the most chance of producing something on par with what America has done.
It's not a matter of growing the industry because it's already orders of magnitude bigger then what it costs to accomplish.
They want to visit Hollywood because they want to see the technology that built these blockbusters because internationally everyone understands heroism, sacrifice and special effects. Additionally these movies aren’t watered down. The writing and the effects have gone through years of development to get to that point. It just doesn’t cater to your sensibilities. The term is snobbish.
The writing for Seinfeld and friends and sex and the city took years to get where they are. These aren’t inborn cultural talents. You can easily compare stories from past American movies to see how cheesy and stupid they are. It takes development for stories to come to where they are today and it’s a back and forth between the audience and writers. As writers write more stories audience members learn and become more sophisticated and twists and humor that worked in the past become cliche. Why do you think you’re too snobbish to appreciate something like avengers? You think someone in the 50s wouldn’t appreciate it? Fuck honestly if the whole mcu up till end game came out in the 50s that whole thing would win a Nobel peace prize.
China is 100% going through this learning process right now. The audiences sophistication and the writers as a result are growing at a breakneck pace. I think movies from China that might appeal to who you are is crouching tiger hidden dragon or Hero as these movies share the more universally appreciated parts of Chinese culture and since that is what you’re interested in, I recommend them to you.
They know of it for different reasons. It has nothing to do with the shows.
>It's not about quality, it's not about blockbusters,
Blockbusters are a form of quality. Just not your form form of quality. You prefer sex and the city.
> Are you suggesting that overseas, the lesson we should take on Chinese culture from Chinese media is that China is infested by demons, has no electricity and is a feudal system??
People know about NYC because it's just a famous city. It has nothing to do with some shows that nobody in Asia watches. I'm also not talking about any of China's cities as marketed by media. I'm talking about the idea of China itself.
The idea that America is a powerful country and that NYC is a great city is slowly dying. Dying because the reality of it is dying as well. It's a slow death one that may never finish in your lifetime but there's no denying that we see a lot of decline.
Tencent has a streaming focused on international market called WeTV, there's also IQIYI. There's Viki too, that is from Rakuten - that is Japanese, but there's a ton of Chinese content there (which she also watches).
My nephew even learned a few words of mandarin (and Korean too) because she keep watching that all day.
Kdramas are really popular here, and don't think it's as popular as the US, my guess it's just the soap opera consumption Latin America was always huge, so it makes Asian dramas more palatable, as they are more soap opera style.
Now for music yeah, don't think Chinese music is that popular or will ever be compared to kpop.
My impression is that Chinese culture has very little appeal elsewhere (at least in the West). They can't seem to be able to (or care to) package it in an appealing way. Sure, they're being catered to in films and video games but I see very little organic interest in Chinese culture, especially compared to Japanese or Korean culture.