Not saying none of this is weird but one thing that's at play in US cultural reactions to Chinese soft power plays is that we take our own soft-power dominance for granted even though we have completely outsourced cultural production to corporations that don't care about ushttps://twitter.com/nytimes/status/1420674233152245769 …
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It's panic-inducing for people to realize that in the face of genuine soft-power competition you need state capacity to stay ahead, and we don't have any. As in so many other areas the very idea of serious state action in this area looks and sounds weird to us now
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Vastauksena käyttäjälle @PetreRaleigh
I find I view this differently. Free and prosperous societies produce cultural soft power organically, whereas authoritarian societies have to use state action. Sure, some of that organic production is corporate, some of it isn't and there are gradations in between.
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Vastauksena käyttäjille @BretDevereaux ja @PetreRaleigh
But then again, I'll also take corporations, which don't care about you but also cannot legally shoot you or put you in a death camp, to state power - where state actors who *also* don't care about you can do both of those things.
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Vastauksena käyttäjälle @BretDevereaux
I'm sorry, I reject this on several levels. First you're conflating cultural production - which happens in all human societies - with soft power projection - which happened for us in the 20th century because we were militarily and economically hegemonic.
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Vastauksena käyttäjille @PetreRaleigh ja @BretDevereaux
Furthermore at the time that our cultural products became hegemonic the people who produced a huge percentage of them lived under a regime of legalized semislavery so I think we can safely rule out our freedom as an engine of creativity.
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Vastauksena käyttäjälle @PetreRaleigh
Freedom is relative, not a binary. I have relatively little problem concluding that the United States was, even in 1950, relatively more free than other large countries, even though I also very much agree that it was far less free than today and than it ought to have been.
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Vastauksena käyttäjille @BretDevereaux ja @PetreRaleigh
And I'd also argue that cultural production contributes to soft power. I can think of no government action in the last half-century that likely has as much diplomatic utility in the long run than the fact that a character called 'Captain America' in the unimpeachable goodguy...
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Vastauksena käyttäjille @BretDevereaux ja @PetreRaleigh
...of the world's most successful action franchise.
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Vastauksena käyttäjälle @BretDevereaux
The reason it's the most successful action franchise AND the reason it stars somebody called "Captain America" both have nothing meaningful to do with freedom and everything to do with hegemony.
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I tend to disagree. Clearly, hegemony plays a role, but the USSR was plenty hegemonic, put tremendous effort into that kind of cultural production and couldn't make it stick. Now the PRC is doing the same and so far the best of it is apparently Wolf Warrior.
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Vastauksena käyttäjille @BretDevereaux ja @PetreRaleigh
It seems fair to posit that individuals w/ a higher degree of personal freedom tend to produce cultural products which become more widespread. I won't say 'better' because there is often great art by oppressed people, but the nature of oppression prevents it being widespread.
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Vastauksena käyttäjille @BretDevereaux ja @PetreRaleigh
The follow on consequence, that societies which have relatively more individuals in conditions of relatively higher degrees of personal freedom will tend to be more culturally prominent than their raw population or GDP would suggest seems born out.
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