Influence of Chinese Culture on World Markets

China has one of the largest populations in the world, it stands to reason cultural beliefs and trends would hold sway with many of the major manufacturers who sell internationally. Markets such as music, movies, television and video games are all affected by the preferences of one of the largest consuming countries on Earth. If a certain type of movie is popular the time, it’s only reasonable that the movie producers would cater to that. The influences are wide spread and well defined in nearly all forms of pop culture. China, as a nation, is growing very rapidly, both economically and in terms of population. They’re spending power has grown nearly 57% in the last five years alone. This allows them to invest in foreign markets on an immense scale, and therefore hold considerable sway over what is produced and distributed. Industry is moving East, and as such, so is a lot capital which fuels this investment. The continuing growth is expected to be at least 30% in the next year for most major industries. Movies with martial arts sequences tend be very popular. Even if the actors are not themselves of Asian descent, the fighting styles are visually interesting, and therefore the movies do well. Actors like Jet Li, Jacky Chan and many, many more have revolutionized movie making by implementing different forms of karate, tai kwan do and other fighting styles. Movies like The Matrix, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and The Last Samurai popularized martial arts and sword fighting to an astounding degree. The Matrix specifically contained some of the most revolutionary choreography of any film to date, much of which included martial arts. Not only did these movies do astoundingly well here in America, but box office sales in China were phenomenal as well, although they didn’t even begin to compare with American sales, due to the piracy problem. Television, too, contains a good deal of influence from the East. It’s hard to differentiate, in truth, because at the same time, the East is being heavily influenced by American popular trends and customs. This is a more difficult line to draw because, while there are some subtleties that not everyone would catch, they exist. Shows like South Park, The Simpsons and other popular satirical programs contain such references, but it’s not so pronounced as in other forms of media. Video games, which are produced and distributed in huge quantity in Japan, are an area in which the influences of Chinese culture have left a remarkable foot print. Video game characters look Asian, and often times even speak only Chinese, with subtitles to keep the player abreast of what is happening in the game. The market for games based on various Asian martial arts tactics is huge as well. The typical ‘ninja’ game is popular, and it focuses heavily on Asian fighting styles. Popular titles like Tekken and Ninja Gaiden sold huge amounts of copies, both of which are purely martial arts and ninja style games. There are literally hundreds of titles with the same game play, and on the whole, they tend to very well. Not only do the games themselves take place in Asia, as well as being based on such things, they are also produced in large part by companies in this area. Japan is a huge player in the video game hardware and software market, and with China right next door, it stands to reason they’d have significant influence. Not only will the games be somewhat tailored to sell well in China, but the practice of basic cultural diffusion will affect the customs and popular trends in Japan, which in turn will affect what is produced. China not only influences with their money, but their cultural trends in this case. In the aforementioned game Ninja Gaiden, the player plays as the character “Ryu,” an obviously non-American name. While he speaks perfect English, this is simply for the benefit of the player. The game takes place in China, Hong Kong mostly, and is based 100% on the use of ancient Chinese style weapons. Shurikens, Samurai Swords, Nuchuckas and many other weapons are all that are available. No fire arms, as are common in many other games today. The player works to defeat an evil emperor who uses evil magic to summon things like evil dragons and demons to fight against the character. Every other character in the game appears to be of Asian ancestry, and even though your opponents do use guns at times, the use of the players samurai sword always bests them. Another game that is marketed almost strictly to Chinese gamers is a little-known title, in the States at least, The Dynasty Warriors RTS: Romance of the Three Kingdoms. It’s a game that recorded abysmal sales in the US, but racked up tons of purchases in China. Based on a Chinese historical novel, it’s not as boring as many gamers anticipated. In fact, it’s an action game at it’s core, but it’s also got a lot of influence from Chinese culture, which is likely why the sales were so vastly different from one continent to the other. This game has sold over one hundred million copies so far. Marketing obviously factors in, as does the fact that it is, in truth, just a very good game. The question can be asked, though, why is it a good game? Many people simply enjoy playing games of this nature, with the sword play and whatnot. This is clear evidence that Asian culture, specifically Chinese, permeates American, and even World, culture. It’s clear that China holds considerable sway over many different aspects of our lives. Economically speaking, they’re becoming a veritable power house. They consume almost as much as America as a country, and it’s said that if they consumed on par with American, person-to-person, the world would have no resources left. This Malthusian specter only serves to illustrate this point, that China is a part of the world that can have massive impact on the rest of the countries who produce goods.

Tiffany 5

Works Cited

Einhorn, Bruce “China Plays For Keeps Online” 11/10/04 Yahoo! News

Lee, Derek “Dynasty Warriors 3” 2002 www.abc.org 22/7/2002

“Profits start rolling in as the Chinese consumer market takes shape” 2004 < http://www.kpmg.co.nz/pages/102218.html>