China’s recent successes in tech and entertainment have proven to the world that its creativity and innovation can keep pace with the Western-dominated zeitgeist. How might this translate into China’s relations with states across the globe?
Picture an animation featuring two young semi-deities, standing up to their pious overlords, and challenging orthodox assertions on what counts for “good” and “evil”. The “Good Guys” turn out to be dubious and conniving figures, whilst those who are purportedly “Evil” have much going for them as redeeming features. The moral complexities and nuances underlying the plot are paired with vivid visuals that would appeal to the most cynical adult and the most distracted youth in the room alike.
I am not speaking here of the equally exceptional Pixar-Disney collaboration Coco (2017) – but the box office-shattering Ne Zha 2 (2025), directed and written by indie director Jiaozi (Yang Yu). Released on January 29th this year, the film has become the highest-grossing animated film and non-English language film in the world – the first to gross over $2 billion USD. As of mid-March, it was the sixth-highest-grossing film of all time.
Many of the messages contained within would perhaps shock the cynic unaccustomed to the notion of a contemporary Chinese film imparting moral ambiguities, questioning authority, and offering genuinely imaginative take on a Chinese classic – there is quite the tactful feminisation of select characters, and a daring dash of Sichuanese dialect coming from a fan-favourite character.
A little over a week prior to the film’s release, the news of a hitherto little-known Chinese AI application – DeepSeek – defied the pessimism of many a sceptic of Chinese technology, in demonstrating that private Chinese AI entrepreneurs, with the right mix of ingenuity, determination, and audacious experimentation, can also match their Western counterparts in model efficiency, at a fraction of the costs committed by leading players in Silicon Valley. Some have dubbed DeepSeek a definitive “Sputnik Moment” for Western technologists – though such zero-sum framing glosses over the possibility that Sino-American collaboration in AI could in fact yield substantially more dividends for humanity at large.
Both examples hark back to an episode that broke out in early January. As the date for a prospective ban on social media platform TikTok loomed, hundreds of thousands of its most avid users flocked en masse from the much-maligned application to RedNote (Xiaohongshu). The end result? The recognition that many of the most hysterical Western narratives about China – scaremongering, perhaps – have little to do with how many urban, middle-class Chinese households go about living their own lives.
Children look at a poster for "Ne Zha 2" in a theater in Los Angeles County, the United States, Feb. 14, 2025. The highly-anticipated film is released by CMC Pictures in Mandarin with English subtitles in about 750 selected theaters in North American cities including Los Angeles, San Francisco, Houston, Chicago, New York, Boston, Atlanta, Toronto, Vancouver and a few other cities with a large overseas Chinese population. (Photo by Qiu Chen/Xinhua)
Is China’s soft power improving?
Ne Zha 2, DeepSeek, and RedNote – all three have been pivotal episodes highlighting the prowess and appeal of Chinese culture, in an age where soft power is increasingly contested and the axis of competition between powers, including China and the U.S. Renowned academic Joseph Nye has defined soft power as such: “A country may obtain the outcomes it wants in world politics because other countries – admiring its values, emulating its example, aspiring to its level of prosperity and openness – want to follow it.”
There are tentative signs that Chinese soft power has gradually improved over recent years. Some may be tempted to cite the Brand Finance Global Soft Power Index 2024, which found that the country’s “soft power” ranking has surpassed that of Japan’s and Germany’s, and ranked only behind the U.S. and the U.K. – though it remains somewhat unclear as to what counts for soft power per the methodology. Others may cite the 2024 ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute’s State of Southeast Asia Survey Report, on which I have commented on previously – though the results are perhaps better attributed to rising resentment towards the U.S. in the region, over the war in Gaza.
Of course, with Donald J. Trump’s antics in the White House arousing antipathy and compounding concern amongst long-standing American allies, Beijing has more than these seismic shifts to thank. In any case, across none of the above cases of broadly positive publicity was there extensive state intervention, subsidy, or encouragement by the Chinese state.
Whilst it remains notoriously difficult to quantify the soft power of any country, and harder to demonstratively establish a causal connection between these recent breakthroughs and China’s soft power standing, it is not implausible to suggest that the Chinese state and society have benefited positively from these recent developments. From the critically acclaimed role-playing game Black Myth: Wukong to Ne Zha 2, from RedNote to DeepSeek, there is a growing, genuine recognition that China can offer viable cultural alternatives to Hollywood and Silicon Valley, which are no less well-received and popularly accessible than their “Western” counterparts.
The key to soft power lies with the people.
DeepSeek was developed by a quantitative fund manager. The stories shared on RedNote were largely organic. They were unlikely to have been coordinated and orchestrated in a deliberate and top-down manner. Both Black Myth and Ne Zha 2 alike were written and produced by private citizens – even though the former did benefit from tax incentives provided by the Zhejiang provincial government. The Chinese state certainly did not hinder or thwart these projects’ organic development, on the contrary to those asserting that there exists no room for originality and risk-taking on the part of private creatives in China. Yet it also did not play a steering role vis-à-vis many of these successes. Fundamentally, the key to contemporary Chinese power rests with its people.
Gamescom 2023, COLOGNE, GERMANY
Gaming enthusiasts waiting in front of the stand Black Myth: Wukong at the 2023 Gamescom gaming fair on August 23, 2023 in Cologne, Germany. Gamescom is the world’s largest computer and video gaming fair.
Lower-level and mid-ranking bureaucrats now operate in an increasingly risk-averse manner – one that places greater emphasis upon fealty to superiors and adherence to political doctrines in explicit public messaging. When it comes to the country’s cultural and arts policy over the past decade and a half, state discourses have become increasingly trenchant, in articulating a “good China story” placating the increasingly internet-savvy and informed domestic citizenry. Whilst language aimed at stirring up nationalistic sentiments once played well to domestic sensibilities, the issue is that such rhetoric would often alienate undecided and uninformed audiences from afar. Yet the implicit trade-off is understandable from a bureaucratic perspective: it is much better for one’s storytelling to be ineffectual, than for it to be politically “erroneous.”
This is where the Chinese private sector and civil society – with the levels of discretionary dynamism afforded to them – have a crucial role to play. Entrepreneurs and investors in the country are best-placed to share candid and forthcoming assessments of the opportunities and headwinds with which the economy is grappling. Indie producers and directors are free of the institutional burdens and expectations that bind them to reiterating official lines to take. The central administration has long opted to grant more creative licensing to those who can broadly comply with stipulated legal and policy frameworks, whilst carving out their own niches in achieving commercial success. Think Liu Cixin’s Three-Body Problem, for instance, which does not shy away from the Cultural Revolution, or the late doyen Jin Yong, who did not mince his words over his scepticism towards the Chinese government. It is these individuals who are best placed to demonstrate the richness, diversity, and fundamental profundity of Chinese culture – thereby contributing towards perceptions and attitudes towards the country.
I have just returned from a trip to Gaoming, Foshan – an up-and-coming district in one of the more overlooked tier-one cities in the Greater Bay Area. A bog-standard shopping mall smack in the middle of the district features a Haidilao brimming with excitement and overflowing with patrons, whilst foreign brands, such as Starbucks, serve eager, young millennials alongside more prominent local establishments. There is an air of optimism, determination, and can-do enthusiasm amongst the youth on the ground. In some ways, they are all bona fide instrumental advocates of a “Good China Story” – a story that is accurate, balanced, and reflective of the massive potential that China still offers today, for those who are willing to understand and engage properly with it.
