How Genshin Impact Became China's Biggest Export

To be honest, I made this video so I can claim my Honkai Star Rail pulls as a tax write-off.

BGM Sources:

Sources and further reading:

Zhang, Lin. “Productive vs. Pathological: the Contested Space of Video Games in Post-Reform China (1980s-2012).” International journal of communication 7 (October 2013).

[sarethdarva]

I maintain that Genshin is probably the greatest cultural ambassador for Chinese culture in the world right now. Not just through the Liyue parts and its playable characters, though that has already done a great deal (see: exposing the world to Chinese opera, the annual Lantern Rite/Chinese New Year events, etc etc). Mihoyo’s official YouTube channels also have full videos of Chinese cuisine being cooked, traditional Chinese art being crafted, and my favorite, an entire live action movie centered around a real life Lantern Festival and a father and son. (As a Chinese person myself I found that incredibly moving.) MiHoYo seems to be deeply conscious of its role as cultural ambassadors and I think can help reduce the xenophobia that is rising everywhere due to the geopolitical tensions.

But as you say—this creativity can only last as long as the heavy hand of censorship isn’t placed on them. MiHoYo has to walk a fine line. They’re great now but the bigger they get the more scrutiny they might receive.

[Maxmektovich]

This guy made a full-scale lection of chinese/japanese/korean history just to explain why genshin impact is so popular. it's pretty respectful

[BellBOYd]

As a straight man I honestly appreciate the spectrum of male characters in Genshin. Even as a weeb it feels weird how hard it is often to find male characters that are interesting in the media I like.

[Abicated]

I'm frankly surprised what Mihoyo have been able to get away with for the genshin story. Think about the plot of Sumeru. A country of elites used technology promised to improve the lives of its citizens to create a giant surveillance state to monitor the thoughts and habits of its people and used ai learning to predict and quash any dissent before it can begin. In addition, said government does not value the lives of its citizens, using them in order to further the interests of the elites, without any concern for the interests of the civilians. It even oppresses a religious minority by either removing them from society or making them laborers. They also want to remove the old god and supplant it with a god they have complete control over, cementing their power. And the moral of the story is doing these things are bad. You could say a lot of countries are doing many of these things, but China is for sure doing all of them and the fact that they let this story seep through the cracks is crazy.

[xmyusernamegoesherex]

as someone who was adopted from china and raised by white parents in a majority white town, i spent a lot of my life dealing with internalized racism and sinophobic sentiment. i’ve spent the last 6 years of my life really working on reconnecting with east asian and chinese culture. i was aware of genshin for a while but didn’t start playing it until this year, and the great sense of belonging from this celebration of chinese culture and pop culture, when everything in the news and my childhood regarding china was mostly negative, ended up meaning a lot to me. i know it’s still a fictional representation and loose interpretation of culture, but there’s something about my connection to genshin that kpop and anime never really gave me in the same way

[stephmendes_]

I would also add that another factor of Genshin is that it's a high quality game that runs on mobile. Mobile games were known for puzzles, tower defense, card games, etc. Genshin is an open world action RPG that elevated the threshold for mobile games. I don't have high end PC, nor console, and for years my biggest gaming desire was to be able to play this kind of game. So when I got a new mobile that could run heavy games, Genshin was the first one that got my attention (I didn't know it was Chinese and I didn't even know what gacha was.) I remember I sent a message to my friend, told her I've found my dream game only for her she to give me a lot of warnings about the dangers of gacha xD

About Chinese censorship going against soft power, I remember how danmei novels started to get popular, how a friend of mine, who was never into asian pop culture, got addicted to Mo Dao Zu Shi and went head first into Chinese pop culture, just to have everything shut down by the government. My worries about the huge popularity of Genshin and HSR is the government going not only after character outfits, but also censoring the little homossexual romance nuances that Mihoyo loves to add in their stories...

[osoiii]

The lack of creative freedom is absolutely crazy in China. Video games, apps, movies, music, books, talkshows, literally everything requires government approval. Video games in particular requires a government-issued permit to be published, and god helps you when the government stops issuing such permit for no reason at all for years.

[dotkiarika]

Honestly, I'm a bit disappointed you didnt talk about The Untamed/Mó Dão Zu Shi. Before Genshin, that was by far the most successful Chinese cultural export in history, being one of the most successful shows in the world surpassing despite not only being extremely long but also distinctively chinese. Danmei has grown so much in popularity, its a bit insane actually, specially considering there's a strong governmental pushback against it in China, with the other highly antecipated adaptation by that same author (Heaven's Official Blessing/TGCF) being stuck in censorship limbo for years.

[dhkrp]

Great video as always!

As a Korean-born living in America with basically 80% Chinese friend group who are also weebs, I found a lot of your thoughts aligned with mine.

I think I have a take on the popularity of genshin with the female market.
Mihoyo's roots have been more otaku-centric; honkai 3rd and other of their early lineups reflect the more traditional otaku market model.
The censors and government eyes were always closing in on Mihoyo, as the market got bigger, and I think Genshin might have been their attempt to make a game that would be less scrutinized, and in the process gained a more mass market appeal, a sort of creative restriction that was able to birth something productive.

Blue Archive being the antithesis of that is quite resonating; a game, from ground-up, built to appeal to the otaku market, that could even compete with Genshin within Japan at times because of that lazer focus on the wants and needs of their hardcore audience. I still remember the time where my twitter timeline was just 90% Kisaki art, truly terrifying stuff.

ps- nice pronunciation of park chung hee btw, that was str8 up native

[arufianz]

Okay so Mihoyo is actually "Tech otakus save China" lol

[respectyourself]

For most of my life I always struggled to embrace my cultural identity due to growing up in a mainly western country and always being exposed to scrutiny and racism. At a point in time I had wished I was at least born from a country like Korea or Japan which deals with less scrutiny because of geopolitics. When Genshin released and I got to play it, it really was a comfort game I needed this entire time to show me the beauty in my own culture. This is quite dumb to say but Genshin literally changed my life and views on my own identity so it’ll always have a place in my heart no matter what kind of problems it may have or face.

[tianming]

The only other form of modern Chinese cultural media I'm aware of that's become relatively popular in the West is BL (danmei) novels. In the past couple of years, most of the bookstores I've gone to are stock full of Chinese BL novels, including the "big three" from MXTX, Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation, Scum Villain, and Heaven Official's Blessing, but also other ones like Guardian, The Husky and His White Cat Shizun, Thousand Autumns, Stars of Chaos, etc. They've definitely not become as popular as Genshin has since they appeal to a narrower audience, but I still think it's interesting how much they've caught on in the last few years. The animes for Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation and Heaven Official's Blessing definitely helped paved the way for this, along with The Untamed and Word of Honor, but it's still pretty interesting how the most common Chinese animes/dramas/books in the West today are almost all BL, especially when you consider that China censors BL content a lot more than Japan or Korea does---a lot of these books have explicitly LGBT characters and sometimes even sexual scenes, but these are always removed or at least de-emphasized in the anime/drama adaptations.

[mimozav]

It’s really interesting how most people who consume Chinese media find it through first finding Korean or Japanese media. I see this all the time and even I was a part of this pipeline. For me it was anime to kpop to chinese literature both modern and classic and through that I have been discovering cpop and cdramas and video games

[nzho]

Agree with most point. Huge Disagree with the Japan depiction of Inazuma and Iiyue of China is biased against Japan. Because the Inazuma is 1 for 1 depiction of the Edo Japan. Which banned all the swords(vision) and forbid anyone from coming in and out and only allow a small port on Kyushu Sound familiar? Because it is basically Genshin setting. Also Liyue is Ruled by 7 richest people(you only need to be rich) and everyone basically gets ruled by different companies hardly a nice depiction. I think that point you made doesn't make any sense.

[justinwong]

You forgot about tiktok being a major success in terms of international popularity, but in terms of games mihoyo and such gachas definitely takes the cake. I started playing my first Chinese gacha azur lane and damn i dont regret it

[LolaLink]

I'm a new Genshin player and seeing Liyue and Inazuma... I was like hoooo boy. Glad I'm not the only one to notice. I think it's interesting that you pointed it out as a way to appease regulation.

I'm glad to see the Chinese representation in Genshin because it's really depressing that their art creation is so heavily regulated. Feels like Chinese media isn't given the freedom to breathe.

Great video! (:

[rdrisms]

Genshin using an anime style is basically a business decision as it has become shorthand to convey that your media is "Not Western, " which I think above all is a testament to Japanese soft power and cultural production. Like the two major aesthetic styles of drawn mass visual media (as opposed to the fine arts) in our world right are are basically manga and American comics, and you have non-Japanese and non-American media that largely uses one style or the other

also, self-censorship has as much a role to play as actual censorship in stifling creativity, innovation, and cultural output in China. this is a general phenomenon in the country as a whole, not just applicable to the entertainment and the arts, and has been an issue since at least the Cultural Revolution, long before the Xi Jinping era which, in fairness, has really ramped up stupid interventions like banning media portrayals of "effeminate" men. In previous decades there was a huge concern about "shanzhai" products which has been mitigated greatly in years since. the same could happen to cultural production, but not under the current regime's policies

in all, china soft power bad, genshin exception to rule

[zixuanyu]

FANTASTIC.
Around a year ago when Sumeru released, I began to realize clearly that Genshin Impact is a Chinese game, and began to notice all its Chinese lore characteristics clearly. As I am only 14 year old and wasn't particularly good at writing convincing stuff, I have wrote a bunch of Genshin Lore articles trying to explain the philosophical part of the Chinese culture in the inspirations of Genshin's world building, but never got much likes or understanding. The westerners just simply don't understand and criticize immediately, especially in Reddit. You certainly did a fantastic job in explaining the root of the problem: Social stereotypes, which sounds far-fetching but is actually the base.


And here's a joke: What does Herrscher of Sentience's Sentience stands for and why does she behave in this way? Because she's the sentience of Chinese Culture, which is quite toxic in terms of personal attacks.

[kelvin-ty]

Tbh i think cross culture in a package but not mixing them up together is the best selling point here, i mean i might be fond towards japanese culture today for a week and decided to hangout around inazuma, and next week i decided to stick around liyue. But i had to agree that genshin by far is the most successful, guess who tells the best stories nowadays wins

[pipi]

China’s cultural export in recent years has actually grown significantly compared with 10 years ago. The censorship has some degree of impact on china’s creative freedom but the key factor is economic growth. Japan’s economy became strong in the 1980s and that’s when japan’s cultural products started to be popular globally, same thing happened to South Korea in the 2000s and the 2010s. China is now transitioning into a high-income economy so its culture export finally starts to grow