><i>There’s been much talk in recent weeks about China’s potential role as world leader, during a time when Trump’s America is erecting walls. China has nearly all the characteristics to lead effectively, with its willingness to engage in global trade and its promises to fight climate change, all backed by its economic and military gravitas. Despite all this, China still isn’t beloved abroad, at least not to the extent that America is. China’s music, movies, and fashions are relatively unpopular. Put another way, China is not seen as cool; its pop culture and pop stars lack global swagger. The question is why, and whether that matters.</i><p>First, when we say "soft power" to the "world", by "world" we often mean "the US/Europe". As for Africa and Latin America, most of the countries in these places were for long European colonies, and so, inspired and conditioned into a mix of indigenous and western culture. But there are billions of people in Asia, in countries that are not China, who do look up to some degree to China (and historically, even more so), and which we don't even count.<p>Second, the eastern cultures and western cultures had not really much of an exchange between them, and and different priorities, lifestyles, sensibilities, and heroes for millennia. So there's a gap there, that doesn't exist between the US and Europe or Latin America for example, and makes transmission more difficult.<p>Third, it's usually the richer (in money) country that gets to enjoy the soft power. China might be coming close in GDP, but that doesn't make it as rich, because the per capita is still lower, and a population three times the US are still poor. Japan itself didn't get to enjoy its influence in soft power (gadgets, anime, manga, street fashion, food, etc) until it got economically strong in the late 70s and 80s, to the point of US media always fearing about the Japanese buying companies etc.<p>[1] With Japan it's a little different, because Japan itself got obsessed with certain western ways and fashions and incorporated them into their output - so people in the west e.g. consume Anime (an art form itself west inspired, in fact whose technology and first works originated in the west (animation) -, not so much traditional Japanese culture and its modern developments. Kurosawa, for example, which somehow made it to the west, is still heavily inspired by western cinema. Mizoguchi, which was far less, is ignored. Even someone like Murakami might as well have been born in Boston, as far as his work is concerned. Food of course, whether Japanese or Chinese, is more easily shared.