State of play and the rise of ‘Cool China’ brands

China was ranked second in Brand Finance’s 2025 Global Soft Power Index. It was behind the United States, but surpassed the United Kingdom, Japan and South Korea. After a pandemic-era dip, market-driven cultural exports have fueled the Chinese surge.

Yet soft power is nothing new. Hollywood blockbusters, K-pop and Japanese anime have long demonstrated its effectiveness. 

What is new is that China’s emotionally, engaging popular culture has only recently begun to capture broader and sustained global attention. 

From the worldwide Labubu craze and the hit video game Black Myth: Wukong, to the record-breaking animated film Ne Zha 2 and the pastoral YouTube videos of Li Ziqi, these cultural products sketch a fresh image of China.

But this shift is not just cultural. It reflects deeper changes in the country’s economy, as it moves beyond its identity as the “world’s factory,” by investing heavily in cultural intellectual property. 

Pop cultures

These creations generate not only revenue, but also meaning. They resonate emotionally with younger global consumers who seek community, identity and lifestyle through cultural consumption. 

It is a path well trodden by Japan and South Korea, whose pop cultures won over international youth far earlier. For China, the recent wave of viral products suggests a similar breakthrough.

This stands in stark contrast to China’s long-standing, state-led soft power efforts, such as Confucius Institutes, China Global Television Network and the Belt and Road Initiative.

They have been negatively perceived abroad as heavy-handed “charm offensives.” Or even “sharp power.” Such projects are often criticized for being propagandistic, inauthentic and lacking credibility.

China has not been blind to the backlash. The viral success of Li Ziqi prompted a popular joke among Chinese netizens: “One Li Ziqi is worth a thousand China Global Television Networks.” The quip captures an uncomfortable truth for the Chinese government.

Market-oriented, intellectual property-based cultural exports are often more persuasive than top-down messaging in building soft power.

State media have since sought to frame these successes as proof of the country’s “confidence,” and the inevitable outcome of a thriving digital economy packed with cultural industries. These narratives reveal the dual role of China’s soft power.

They are intended to enhance China’s global image and cultural appeal, while domestically fueling nationalism and pride by celebrating creative success.

State organizations

Official narratives often rush to fold these success stories into China’s grand strategies, such as “Telling China’s Story Well” or “Chinese Culture Going Global.” 

But this framing plays straight into the hands of the Western media, which tend to stereotype any soft power effort as state-directed propaganda. 

Li Ziqi’s YouTube channel, for instance, is widely celebrated for its authenticity. Yet, it is dismissed by many Western media outlets as a propaganda tool after receiving awards and recognition from Chinese state organizations.

This raises a dilemma for China. How far can the state embrace market-driven cultural exports without suffocating their credibility? Tokyo’s “Cool Japan” initiative is often cited as a model for how governments can leverage popular culture to boost national image. 

But China’s case is trickier. Given the baggage of its previous state-led soft power campaigns and the entrenched stereotypes that accompany them, a government-led “Cool China” push could backfire. 

For now, the smart move may be to step back and let non-state actors build soft power on their own terms, since it works best when it does not look like soft power.

Still, the rise of Chinese cultural exports has drawn enormous global attention, not least because it contrasts sharply with past state-driven strategies. A more productive approach would be to examine the dynamic interplay between the two. 

To understand the ecosystem behind China’s soft power, it is important to realize it  involves multiple actors, with the state still playing a leading role. What is urgently needed is a nuanced perspective that captures the complexity of this transformation. 

Official narratives

We should move beyond the tired “propaganda hypothesis” that reduces every Chinese soft power success to state manipulation. 

At the same time, it is worth watching how Beijing responds to these successes. Will they be incorporated into official narratives? Or will they be allowed to flourish without intervention?

Jian Xu is an Associate Professor at the School of Communication and Creative Arts at Deakin University in Australia.

This edited article is republished from East Asia Forum under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article here.

The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy of China Factor.