Exploring a New Paradigm for Cultural Export: Technology + Media + User Collaboration Drives Global Communication, Revealing How Generation Z is Reshaping China's Cultural Export Strategy and Ecosystem in the Digital Age.
Lyu Xin and Xu Ruozhao
08:36, July 9, 2025, Source: Guangming Daily
Currently, China's cultural export is undergoing a paradigm shift driven by technology, media, and users. This transformation does not emerge out of thin air but is built upon the grand backdrop of decades of changes in global popular culture.
From the 1980s to the present, waves of global popular culture have continuously evolved. Taking Southeast Asian countries as an example, Japanese anime culture emerged during the print and television era; during the PC internet era, the 'Korean Wave' culture represented by online games and esports appeared; and in the mobile internet era, a new digital 'national trend' culture represented by Chinese web novels, online games, web dramas, and domestic animation has emerged. Meanwhile, Generation Z, as 'digital natives' in the wave of the internet and economic globalization, is profoundly influencing the logic of global cultural production and consumption. With diverse aesthetics and distinct personalities, their desire for interaction and participation surpasses any previous generation. Interest-driven engagement, emotional value, and online cultural communities are becoming keywords of the new media era, rewriting the grammatical rules of global popular culture. It can be said that these generational popular culture phenomena are not isolated incidents but the result of the interplay between media technology, youth aesthetics, and global collaboration.
Today, the rise of digital intelligence technology and smart media is driving fundamental changes in global cultural forms and communication models. China's cultural industry is transforming from a single content exporter to a 'technology-media-user' tripartite collaborative system, with technology as the skeleton, media as the bridge, and user co-creation as the driving force, jointly promoting the evolution of cultural export paradigms.
If technology and media have shaped new carriers for cultural export, then the changing cultural tastes of Generation Z have profoundly influenced the production and consumption grammar of cultural content. Generation Z enjoys breaking traditional aesthetic paradigms and has a particular fondness for subcultures that emphasize individuality and anti-cuteness. The popularity of LABUBU has become a cultural symbol that transcends geographical and language barriers, reflecting an 'imperfect but fun' attitude toward life and Generation Z's pursuit of authentic self-expression. At the same time, having grown up in an era of multicultural convergence, they excel at mixing and remixing different cultural elements. For example, Chinese mythology-themed games often blend Western fantasy worldviews with Japanese anime styles, combined with Chinese aesthetic expressions, allowing global players to find familiar elements within them. This 'you-in-me, me-in-you' approach to creation deconstructs and reconstructs traditional cultural product forms. The cultural grammar revolution driven by Generation Z is continuously reshaping the global cultural communication landscape. Adapting to this new grammar, emphasizing co-creation and community, and strengthening emotional connections have become key to gaining Generation Z's approval for global cultural products.
With the increasing maturity of platform algorithms and user co-creation mechanisms, the media practices driven by Generation Z as 'digital natives' have further evolved cultural export into a platform-based collaboration. On short-video platforms, AI-generated traditional Chinese-style videos, hand-dance interpretations of ink-wash aesthetics, and virtual digital humans narrating mythological tales form small yet highly shareable media narratives. The algorithmic recommendation mechanisms for such content are no longer just channels for content distribution but have become 'dark matter engines' for cultural translation. Users conspire with algorithms through likes, comments, and secondary creations, forming a new 'algorithm-content-community' tripartite symbiotic communication mechanism that enables continuous co-creation cycles.
It is worth noting that media evolution brings not only the expansion of communication dimensions but also a revolution in user participation methods. Generation Z users not only want to 'see Chinese culture' but also expect to 'participate in the redefinition of Chinese culture.' They use AI tools to recreate mythical creatures from the Classic of Mountains and Seas, reconstruct Ming and Qing street scenes with Unreal Engine, and build digital Chinese scenarios on social platforms. In this process, the boundaries between content and platforms, users and content, gradually blur. Cultural IPs are constantly modified, supplemented, and re-narrated, becoming 'co-creation grammar containers' for global youth.
In summary, the co-evolution of technology, media, and users is giving birth to a new paradigm for cultural export, shifting from 'product-driven' to 'ecosystem-driven,' and from content narratives to 'platform narratives' and 'media narratives.' The future global expression of Chinese culture will no longer rely solely on a few standalone blockbuster films or hit games but will be built on a foundation of technology, with platforms as interfaces and users as co-conspirators, collectively constructing a cultural narrative system embedded in the global digital context. In this system, Chinese culture will no longer be the 'other' or 'export product' of the world but an active node in the co-creation of digital civilization. To achieve this vision, it is necessary to continuously strengthen the construction of end-to-end capabilities with digital intelligence technology at the core—from content design and media construction to communication mechanisms, from platform development to user guidance—forming a global competitive system that covers creativity, technology, operations, and culture.
The future export of Chinese culture will not only be about storytelling as content output but also about constructing cross-cultural dialogue mechanisms through technology and youth as mediators, with interaction and co-creation as the grammar, in the global digital context. In an era where smart technology is emerging, virtual humans are taking the stage, digital artifacts are being reborn, and games are re-narrating interactions, Chinese culture is leaving its data coordinates and modernized samples in the global cultural network with the new forms, logic, and contexts enabled by technology.
(Authors: Lyu Xin, Professor at the School of Animation and Digital Arts, Communication University of China; Xu Ruozhao, Associate Professor at the School of Animation and Digital Arts, Communication University of China)