State-censored cultural production prevented China from exporting soft power like Japan and Korea

Evidence

While Japan and Korea deliberately aimed to achieve “soft power” through cultural exports, China understood popular culture to be part of the state order. Its domestic cultural industry either engaged in the creation of overt propaganda or had to navigate strict censorship laws to exercise its creative freedom. (Hollywood also agreed to censorship of its films in China, including the addition of a law-and-order ending to Fight Club and the removal of references to Freddie Mercury being gay in Bohemian Rhapsody.) This approach hindered the emergence of breakout stars akin to K-pop and J-pop sensations. While the free-flowing internet enabled East Asian culture to seamlessly enter mainstream markets, China’s Great Firewall largely prevented its memes and media from reaching people overseas. Censorship also stifled the spread of Western music and films inside China, leaving many Chinese young creators less exposed to the artistic conventions required to make works of global interest. — W. David Marx, Blank Space, 746

Categorization

• DEFINE: Contrasts two national models of popular culture — Japan/Korea as deliberate soft-power export vs China’s state-order integration.
• ADDENDUM: The Fight Club law-and-order ending and censored Bohemian Rhapsody details show the global supply chain of culture being bent to censorship — censor removing media is like the reader’s earlier treatments of controlled media flows.