A self-absorbed giant

Branko Milanovic · 12 Jul 2026

Others here said this too

China's cultural and intellectual output to the world is far smaller than its economic weight.

Their wordsIt surely does not “produce” one quarter of world culture or intellectual activity (if the latter is defined as influential books, of fiction and non-fiction, politics, history; films, plastic arts, music, theater etc.)

Also said by Dan Wang

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Every claim below was made in this piece, quoted word for word and numbered in the order the piece makes them, so you can read it there rather than take our word for it. The sentence above each quote is our reading of the claim, not their wording. Each quote was checked against a stored copy of the page at build time; where the two differ, the quote is the fact.

Our reading
Chinese writers' preoccupation with China alone is what limits China's soft power abroad.

Their wordsTo come to my key point: this self-concentration limits China’s ideological influence in the rest of the world and its soft power.
Our reading
China's cultural and intellectual output to the world is far smaller than its economic weight.

Their wordsIt surely does not “produce” one quarter of world culture or intellectual activity (if the latter is defined as influential books, of fiction and non-fiction, politics, history; films, plastic arts, music, theater etc.)
Our reading
China had more ideological influence in the world during the Cultural Revolution than it has today.

Their wordsParadoxically, China might have had more soft power when it followed self-destructive policies of Maoist Cultural Revolution.
Our reading
China's economic success has produced no transferable blueprint that other poor countries could follow.

Their wordsChina’s tremendous success had not resulted in a blueprint that could be followed from Afghanistan to Zambia on how to become rich in four decades.

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