Note on SCMP's China's growing cultural clout article

Wed, 18 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0000

This is a quick critique of Why Japan thinks China’s growing cultural clout is something it needs to counter.

The headline and intro focus about the Japan / China angle but Japan is only mentioned 4 times. 4 paragraphs deal with the ‘reaction’ from Japan and 34 others contain uninspired glaze over Chinese’ pop culture achievements, of which my personal opinion is:

Wukong ⊕ as a reference point, if you compare it with something like Yotei (American-made although with a lot of Japanese input), it’s pretty weak culturally and Yotei is excellent on that point. was pretty disappointing relative to the hype: the game-play is not original, the graphics are pretty good (intro cut-scene!) but not revolutionary and the historical tale is pretty weak except in setting-up the story.

China on Post-Candide

Note on SCMP's China's growing cultural clout article