I'd be willing to bet most of the worlds youth are less enthused about American culture after the last 4 years. Would be interesting to compare sentiments between other countries. The box office thing just seems to be that domestic filmmakers are producing better stuff.
American films have not experienced an absolute decline in China. It's just their relative share have declined as Chinese films have improved from bad to passable.<p>King Kong vs Godzilla is projected to do $166 million[1].<p>[1]<a href="https://www.cinemablend.com/news/2564993/godzilla-vs-kongs-crazy-opening-china-box-office-is-back-king-of-the-monsters" rel="nofollow">https://www.cinemablend.com/news/2564993/godzilla-vs-kongs-c...</a>
I don't think this is surprising. You can't expect to constantly lambast an entire nation of people and still expect them to treat you favourably. That's not how humans work.
IMHO, I don't think the Chinese gen z, or Chinese of any gens, are leading the nation away from American culture. In a more YC-ish term, the American culture is merely diluted.<p>2 facts: American blockbusters are still very successful in china, at least the good ones; there are a lot more decent options other than American ones, which was not the case a decade ago. The same can be said with HongKong culture, which used to be the only game in town.
America's millennials, Gen Z are leading America away from American culture.<p>I don't think its surprising to see it in other parts of the world.
The Communist Party in China has led an economic boom over the last 40 years absolutely unprecedented in human history. That earned them a ton of credibility with their citizens. You can commit atrocities and few people will care if you also lift 500M people out of crushing poverty. At the same time, Chinese soft cultural offerings like movies and music have gotten decent if not good. Why would they look up to America at this point?