China's Soft Power at Its Best!

Chinese cinema has become an undisputed power, and its huge investments in American cinema are soaring (it invested $1.1 billion in 2015 and the number tripled to reach $4.7 billion in 2017), and in the last ten years we have seen the names of Chinese production companies in big movie series starting with Avengers and not ending with Mission Impossible and Top Gun.

Chinese actors, the Chinese language, and Chinese values ​​have apparently become guests on American films, and the global audience has begun to criticize this suspicious intervention. Just one example, Uighur was one of the criticized topics (Disney thanked political propaganda agencies and a public security bureau in Xinjiang, the region in northwest China that is witnessing one of the worst human rights abuses today). We speak about "Mulan" - the new live action version- provided clear messages of respect for the ruler, the Chinese social order, the shape of the Chinese productive communes, and the power of the rapidly rising Chinese dragon.

And In the new Chinese/American Marvel production, 80% of the dialogue is in Chinese, 90% of the actors are Chinese, the Chinese values ​​and guiding messages clearly dominate the film. The movie Shang Chi, which tells about a Chinese young man living in the United States, and returns to China to discover his superpowers and fight a group of villains, is a strange mix that has been carefully built in order to attract global audience in general and American audience in particular. Mixing Spiderman, Speed ​​and Crazy Rich Asians. With special appearances for big stars such as Ben Kingsley and Tim Roth.

At a time when Hollywood suffers from a recession due to the Corona pandemic, China is steadily proceeding with its plan of cultural invasion of cinema, relying on its large financial surpluses (China may surpass the United States economically within a few years - the size of the American economy is 21 trillion dollars annually, compared to 15 trillion dollars for the Chinese economy). It attempts to present an alternative value and social model to Western democracy.

Chinese films need a careful and close look, because they do not only create "entertainment", but also create political power and spin a new soft power that will slowly but surely penetrate into the consciousness of new generations.