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Indeed! I recently learned about an aspect of this which is named and tied to national brand strategy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cool_Japan

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I feel like China could really gain by taking a page or two from this playbook.

Not arguing against your point, but there's an active element in America media that's very anti-Chinese. When's the last time you saw a story that was cool or innocent related to China in HN (because MSM's totally out of the question)?

If you fed Americans Chinese news stories from Chinese media directly, they would have an even lower opinion of China. Give an American a copy of global times or China daily (you can find them at the airport) and watch them wonder if this is satire or real!

There were a lot of pro-China articles and comments on HN about 5 or so years ago, China’s popularity has just taken a huge nosedive since then. Sexy Cyborg makes China look cool until the government shuts her down, making China look very uncool.

The MSM had a far more negative view of Japan not too many years ago.

Definitely. Unfortunaly, the people who are currently enjoying the benefits of being China's leaders would only lose. So they have decided to take a different path, esp. in the recent years.

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