[dirtyid]

> exclusively consume the cultural products of the West

There's more penetration of western media and products in PRC, but vast majority of consumption is still domestic even among educated. And trends show the young are more nationalistic than ever, especially among those with more exposure to the west.

>North Korean style propaganda embarrassing. The disconnect really cannot be understated.

Yeah, folks are embarassed at the style of propaganda, ran by old cadres from for a bygone era. Not the idea of propaganda itself. They want better, modernized propaganda that effectively reinforces nationalism, especially abroad.

[magicsmoke]

On the one hand, they're right to cringe at the tone-deaf socialist era government communist propaganda. "How do you do fellow kids" with a communist flare. Clearly produced by cadres in their 60s in a communist bubble.

On the other hand, the current nationalist Chinese bubble is not that much better. Listening practice on Bilibili would be a lot better without the equally tone deaf comments about how all their neighbors are puppets of the US without any personal agency and owe their culture and history to 5000 years of glorious Chinese civilization. The current anti-Chinese sentiments in the west would be far worse if your average American spent even 30 minutes on Chinese websites. They can complain all day about how biased BBC is towards China (arguably true), but I don't see CGTV overtaking BBC globally in popularity anytime soon. One whiff of that smug self-superiority is enough to make anyone regret learning Chinese.

[dirtyid]

Nationalists everywhere are insufferable. The aspiration for "lovable" PRC propanda is just aspirational. IMO very little chance PRC will be able to out-propagandize west/US especially among west/US aligned partners. Language/cultural divide too big. I think domestically people will just settle for less cringy interntionational rhetoric, which itself is a losing game since western media will interpret translations with liberty regardless. It doesn't matter that PRC citizens are relatively apolitical on the whole, with 1.4B population statistics there's will always be too many absurd nationals to paint narrative. Really PRC strategy of maintaining different internet/cultural bubbles and targetting msgs at more receptive Chinese diasphora audiences is on point. Once attempt at "lovable" propaganda fails, PRC will pursue Russia style disinformation because ultimately that's whats most pragmatic given the divide and realities of competition. Also more of those PRC cartoons that called out western hypocrisy that was well recieved domestically and made western media look ridiculous by coordinated labelling them photographs. Or calling out Canadian indigenous drama, Australia enviromentalism etc, stuff that has had more ramifcations on the domestic politics of Canada and Australia leaders than west pressing on XJ/HK/Tibet, which Xi doesn't lose sleep over.