Bear with me, on this boba liberal’s video.
She talks a bit about restriction, censorship, and standardization of exported media by the ebil CCP /s, but rather focuses it on its consequent dullness, on-the-nose approach and cheapening of its media products…
How would you respond to this, point by point? (Sorry if I may sound like I argue in bad-faith)
Additional thanks if you don’t rely too much on whataboutism (yes, we can apply the artificial-politics-imposed media label, associated with CPC, on U.S media, like G.I Joe and Rambo, some of them even funded by the Department of Defense)
does china really NEED media exports to appease westerners though? of course on the western internet china will seem “uncool” or be the punchline in jokes, because the western internet is full of racist, anti-communist liberals or neo-nazis. china is powerful enough on the overall world stage, and especially the global south, to not need to have “soft power” propped up by capitalist media that westerners eat up like kpop or anime (that is also rife with exploitation in their respective industries as well). to me this just kinda seems like “why doesn’t china make itself look nicer for the western internet users???”.
China has actual soft power, in that they build infrastructure for other countries. People can point to a hospital or a highway and say “China helped us build that.” US only has meaningless distractions full of white people living lavishly (even “poor” families in US media are always stupidly wealthy compared to the average person in the global south). It works great on other western nations, but providing actual, tangible material benefits to a people goes a lot further than shoving Avengers 17: The Hulk Passes a Kidney Stone down their throats.
USSR did that. And whoop dee doo, would you look at that - near damn all former republics hate USSR, call it totalitarian oppression and simp for USA!
That’s a bit different though, that was an internal issue, nothing to do with their power projection abroad, and the former states of the USSR hating it has more to do with 30 years of neoliberal propaganda being shoved down their throats rather than anything the USSR actually did.
China gives aid with few strings attached, whereas the USSR demanded that they mirror their political system, which led to things like the Sino-Soviet split and otherwise.