Why is mainland China’s entertainment bad and not good as Japan’s or Korea’s? Japan has anime while Korea has K-pop.

If I had a guess why China’s soft power isn’t as good as Korea’s or Japan’s its probably because:

1. Unlike Korea and Japan, 50% of China’s population is still living in rural areas and ALOT of Chinese are still poor, poor enough to care more about economic growth than about exporting entertainment – in other words China has to become a developed country before they can export soft power
2. China has a massive domestic market and doesn’t have as much need to appeal to foreigners like Japan and especially Korea does
3. Government censorships limits the creativity. For example, a lot of the violent and sexual movies shown in Japan and Korea would be banned in China. One of the more popular movies (Lust, Caution 色,戒) made in China was actually heavily censored in China. These types of movies are commonplace in Japan/Korea but due to government censorship in China they can’t make these.

That said, China is getting better, slowly but surely taking many cues from Japan and Korea.

Chinese version of Korea’s Running Man

Chinese version of Korean drama “My Love from the stars”

SNH48, a Chinese sister group of Japan girl group AKB48

Give China a few years but its getting there.