Introduction

The recent development of uncertain factors in international society has brought the relationship between China and the world to a critical point in history. A key question in China's relationship with the world is from which scale and perspective to observe this change. Cultural communication seems to provide a new perspective for solving this problem. With the development of media technology, the "cultural factor" plays an increasingly important role in international relations. With the end of the Cold War, scholars have pointed out that the "cultural factor" has become one of the most uncertain but unavoidable critical elements in international relations (Ørmen et al. 2021). Lane and Ersson (2016) highlighted that culture is one of the essential factors for national decision-making due to its direct effects on the beliefs and values of national leaders. However, when culture spreads globally, culture is a double-edged sword, which not only shapes harmony but also leads to conflicts. In this significant data era, cultural studies have moved beyond traditional media systems and toward convergence (Ørmen et al. 2021). Culture connects differences around the world in its unique way, and "communication" is the process of constantly repairing and transforming these differences and ultimately forming them into a shared reality.

From the research of the above scholars, it is not difficult to see that with the development of globalization, culture is increasingly inseparable from politics and comprehensive national strength. This view is supported by Qin (2019), who writes that the use and communication of Chinese cartoon culture have helped the Chinese Communist Party transform its perception of the public: from "target audience" to "encourage the audience," which improves the efficiency of China's political participation and practice. However, in contrast, Ding and Saunders (2006) argue that with the development of global culture and communication infrastructure, national cultural autonomy is facing a crisis of weakening, which may lead to a country's political operation being influenced or even controlled by other factors abroad. No matter their views, the evidence presented in this section suggests that scholars agree that the spread of a country's culture can profoundly impact the institutions and structures of international relations.

With the increase in China's cultural and comprehensive strength, more and more scholars have begun to focus on the influence of Chinese culture, especially Internet culture, in the international community. One of the most striking of these is the modern techno-optimists. A recent study by Zhao (2022) examines the role of short videos in enhancing the international influence of Chinese culture and points out that short video, as a kind of folk expression, is of great importance to the self-shaping of Chinese cultural image. However, some scholars hold the opposite view. Collie and Wilson-Barnao (2020) blame the algorithmic culture of short videos, such as TikTok, for allowing the value created by culture to be driven and limited by data and economics. So far, this paper realizes that there has been little discussion about the international influence of Chinese culture from a comprehensive and macro perspective. Most of them only mentioned one single aspect. Culture is a complex whole, which includes class, customs, knowledge, art, belief, and other aspects (Skeggs 2013). It is a set of unique emotional characteristics of a social group (Ding and Saunders 2006). This research is also inspired by this, considering that previous studies usually focus on one kind of media or cultural performance.

Therefore, this paper seeks to address the following questions: What is the trend of the global influence of Chinese culture? What are the internal motivations and external opportunities behind it? What are the challenges? This study systematically reviews the data for the overall strength of Chinese culture and its different influences worldwide, aiming to reveal the constraints and promoting factors behind the global communication of Chinese culture and to find a new way for the global communication of Chinese culture. In general, this paper has been divided into six-part, including this introductory part. The second part calculates the influence of Chinese culture in different regions through factor analysis and reviews the overseas communication status of different cultural industries. Then the third and fourth part is concerned with the opportunities and challenges faced by the global communication of Chinese culture, including domestic and international aspects, respectively. Then, the fifth section focuses on the future development of Chinese cultural communication. Finally, the last part draws upon the entire paper and points out the limitation of this paper.

The changing trend of the international influence on Chinese culture

From the perspective of spatial distribution, the degree of the international influence of Chinese culture closely relates to the factors such as spatial distance, economic and trade exchanges, and the cultural identity between the target country and China. This study calculates the influential changing trend of Chinese culture around the world based on the factor analysis of 2016–2019 data in terms of China's contribution to global governance, the development of the Belt and Road, the degree of positive recognition of Chinese culture in the world, the export number of artworks, TV programs, traditional/electronic cultural products, copyright, etc.

Specifically, Chinese culture has always had a decisive influence in neighboring East and Southeast Asia. The score rose 2.82% from 7 in 2017 to 7.2 out of 10 in 2019. Besides, the influence of Chinese culture in the Middle East and Latin America has witnessed remarkable growth, continuously rising from 6.8 and 7 in 2016 to 7.5 and 7.2 in 2019, respectively, for the impact of the Belt and Road Initiative. In comparison, China's cultural influence is only 6.4 points in the Americas in 2019, and Europe and Oceania reached the lowest score, with only 6.1 points and 5.7 points (out of 10) in 2019, respectively.

Take film as an example. According to the research results of Beijing Normal University on the international communication of Chinese films, audiences in Japan, South Korea, and Southeast Asia have a better understanding of Chinese culture contained in Chinese films than in Europe in terms of values level. This is primarily due to Chinese immigration from Guangdong and Fujian provinces and the profound influence of Confucian culture. The development of cultural identity is a complex process consisting of religion, values and beliefs, history, language, rites of passage, and so on (Bhugra 2004). In this process, history and migration are the most common factors that promote the transformation of cultural bereavement into cultural identity (Bhugra and Becker 2005). Culture is passed on from generation to generation through learning and transmission. China shares a Confucian cultural foundation with South Korea, Japan, and other countries, which cultivates the sense of belonging and identity, and the acceptance of cultural communication is also higher.

From the industry development perspective, the spread of culture cannot be separated from the support of cultural industry and carriers (Ke 2004). This paper focuses on the overseas development of art, education, think tanks, and the news media field.

In recent years, the number of overseas performances by Chinese Art Troup has been stable increasing. Some traditional events, such as "Happy Spring Festival" or "Dancing China," have been launched in world-class art halls such as Lincoln Center for the Arts in New York and Kennedy Center for the Arts in Washington, covering more than 20 million people. Taking the Spring Festival Gala of the China Media Group as an example, from 2018 to 2022, the on-demand viewing volume of the Gala on Facebook, Twitter, and other platforms increased from 17.28 to 71.03 million, indicating that the attention and influence of the gala on overseas social media are on the rise. Meanwhile, the value of exports for artwork, collections, and antiquities increased nearly threefold from 2016 to 2019, reaching $743 million. Chinese exhibition institutions have established close cooperative relations with international well-known cultural organizations such as the Documental Kassel Organizing Committee in Germany, the Europalia Organizing Committee in Belgium, the Guggenheim Museum of Art, Boston Museum of Art, etc., to promote the overseas exhibition of Chinese artworks and cultural relics collections to a new level.

In the field of education, according to the data by the CLEC (Center for Language Education and Cooperation), the number of people learning and using Chinese around the world outside China (including Hong Kong, Macao, and Taiwan) has exceeded 100 million, including more than 60 million overseas Chinese. At the same time, the number of people going abroad to study and those who have returned to China after their studies increased from 409,100 and 523,700 in 2015 to 580,300 and 703,500 in 2019, respectively, which indicates that interpersonal communication, represented by overseas Chinese students and community, plays an increasingly important role in spreading Chinese culture.

As for think tanks construction, according to the 2020 Global Go to Think Tank Index Report (McGann 2021), China had 1413 think tanks in 2021, ranking second in the world and gradually playing its unique role in the international community. Think tanks can be powerful 'mediators' in the process of cultural communication with the participation of social actors, such as communication professionals, scholars, etc.

Regarding the media industry, the new media industry has developed rapidly. As of January 2022, China's social media platforms accounted for six of the world of top 20 monthly active users of social media platforms in the world, with Wechat and Tik Tok ranking fifth and sixth, respectively. This indicates, to a certain extent, that China’s head Technology Co., Ltd., such as Tencent and ByteDance, has the strength to compete with international technology giants such as Google, Facebook, and Microsoft.

Specifically, Tencent regards gaming and social networking as the main fronts for their overseas markets strategy. According to the Statista website, Tencent's gaming revenue (32.3 million dollars) surpassed Sony's (18.2 million dollars) and Apple's (15.3 million dollars) in 2021. Its social media platform WeChat, with 1263 million monthly active users, has also become the second most popular instant messenger App in the world after WhatsApp, which has 2000 million monthly active users. Unlike Tencent, Bytedance has gained traction in overseas markets with its short-form video app. Globally, the average monthly usage time of TikTok in 2021 increased significantly from 13.3 to 19.6 h compared to 2020. Meanwhile, the penetration rate of TikTok in the Middle East and Southeast Asia region has also shown a steady rise trend. For instance, the penetration rate in Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates has exceeded 80%, making it one of the most popular social platforms for local users.

However, unlike new media platforms, the process of traditional media going abroad is hitting a period of stagnation. The number of Chinese media in the top 100 of The World's 500 Largest Media Companies jointly published by World Media Lab and World Executive Group has declined in the past five years, from 9 in 2016 to 6 in 2020. Although the official accounts of China's mainstream media, such as China Daily, Xinhua News, Global Times, and CGTN, have achieved more than one million followers on Twitter, they still lag behind world-class media, such as BBC and CNN. In addition, these media accounts, such as CGTN and China Daily, often endure malicious repression on Twitter or Facebook from western countries and platform systems for their different ideology. For example, when Hu Xijin, the former editor-in-chief of the Global Times, commented on the event of US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's visit to Taiwan on Twitter, Twitter issued a warning of "violation of community rules" and "delete requirement" to him.

Internal motivation and external opportunities for Chinese cultural communication

From the perspective of global communication and international political and economic development, despite global uncertainty factors continuing to increase, the international political and economic situation has generally been characterized as open, equal, and beneficial to all after the Cold War. Peace and development remain the common goal of today's world. At the same time, the growing economic dependence between countries makes it possible to build political trust and provides the basis for the free flow of information. The British sociologist Anthony Giddens (2018), in the preface to his book China's Role in a Shared Human Future: Towards Theory for Global Leadership, points out that the rise of the digital revolution leads globalization to a different level, which requires attaching importance not only to the economic dimension of globalization but also to its political and cultural dimensions, in order to reveal the deep roots of common civilization values and provide an ideological basis for global cooperation. Against this background, the traditional values of "harmony," "respect," and "openness" in Chinese culture have laid the foundation of ideology and cooperation for Chinese culture to go global. In addition, digital technology provides new development opportunities for Chinese cultural communication. The rise of social media has dramatically narrowed the digital and information gap between China and the world by technological means, and further broken the traditional barriers and discourse hegemony established and advocated by West countries.

Internally, international discourse power cannot be separated from the support of comprehensive national strength. More specifically, sovereign states' international discourse power is derived from their international influence and comprehensive national power. The continuous enhancement of China's hard power provides the material foundation for the promotion of the international influence of Chinese culture. Along with the enhancement of comprehensive national strength in politics, economy, and military aspects, China has gradually changed from being the recipient and adaptor in the international community to the advocator and leader. For instance, China actively creates new international organizations and institutions to strengthen discourse power at the source of the system. According to a global opinion survey conducted by the Global Times Research Center, in the current global communication pattern, 35.7% and 34.4% of respondents said they were deeply impressed by the country's economic and technological development, respectively. Besides, developing countries are looking forward to more economic, scientific, and medical cooperation with China, while the United States, Japan, and South Korea are focusing on strengthening political and diplomatic ties with China.

Similarly, the rise of intelligent communication and digital technology has also enabled the field of cultural production and communication domestically. China has a tremendous advantage and prospect in this round of international competition in 5G, blockchain technology, and artificial intelligence. According to the data provided in the China Internet Development Report 2021 compiled by the Internet Society of China, in 2020, the number of 5G network users in China will exceed 160 million, accounting for about 89% of the total number of 5G users worldwide. The scale of the big data industry reached 7.187 billion yuan, up 16% year-on-year, leading the global big data market in terms of growth rate. The scale of the artificial intelligence industry was 303.1 billion yuan, up15% year-on-year, with a growth rate slightly higher than the global growth rate. The VR/AR market reached 30 billion yuan, maintaining a sound development momentum. The development of new media technology can make Chinese culture better presented to the global audience in terms of content presentation form, communication channel, and transmission speed.

Domestic and external challenges of Chinese cultural communication

Concerning external situations and challenges, cultural hegemony and unilateralism are serious factors restricting the spread of Chinese culture. The concept of hegemony has been central to cultural studies in the 1980s, focusing on the impact of Thatcherite culture and ideology on public expression and international communication (Thoburn 2007). This shows that the concept of hegemony places cultural activities in their socio-economic and political context, acknowledging power's creative and constraining nature. Throughout history, the global communication order has experienced three significant periods: imperialism, the Cold War, and the wave of Internet-based globalization. To be specific, imperialism developed a global communication pattern represented by the "Ring Combination," which divided the world's information dissemination into four areas: Reuters, Havas, Wolff, and the New York Press Association; During the Cold War period, the United States and the Soviet Union shifted their offensive and defensive postures in global communication in line with their global strategies and divided the world into two major organizations: NATO and Warsaw Pact. In the twenty-first century, under the pattern of Internet-based globalization, the United States has long been the hegemonic and central position of global information dissemination under its preemptive technological and economic advantages. The changing global communication pattern illustrates that culture and politics cannot be understood without connecting how capital is injected into society (Dyer-Witheford 1999). The global communication pattern has always been the product of global hegemony. This is because the birth and adjustment of the global communication pattern are based on the global political and economic pattern. Changing the world's political and economic strength will inevitably change the information communication relationship and structure.

According to a survey by Global Times Research Center in 2018, although some media upstarts like Al-Jazeera and Russia Today, the top three are still American and British media: The Associated Press, United Press International, and Reuters. China's rapid development in politics, economy, culture and other aspects has aroused Western countries' vigilance and further restrictions. For example, in recent years, biased reports by some Western media on specific issues, such as the China-United States trade war and China’s internal affairs in terms of Taiwan and Xinjiang, have further aggravated political and cultural inequality around the world, which is one of the significant challenges for the global communication of Chinese culture.

Unilateralism is also an essential constraint to Chinese cultural communication for some time to come. In recent years, Western countries have introduced various trade restrictive policies and military harassment against China or even neighboring countries, ignoring the will of the majority and the interests of other countries. For instance, in recent years, from the trade war between China and the United States to internal affairs, such as Taiwan and Xinjiang, China has been subject to malicious sanctions from Western countries and biased reports from western media. Besides, western countries often restrict Chinese media organizations' overseas visits and voice dissemination by shortening journalist visas and restricting examination and approval. The "unilateral" and "multilateral" conflicts on the economic level evolved into the "unipolar" and "multipolar" confronts on the political level, and finally reflected in the "homogeneity" and "pluralism" differences on the cultural level. The rise of unilateralism has exacerbated the monopoly of discourse by a few countries, making it difficult to forge a truly global consensus. A good, healthy, and sustainable global communication pattern should embrace the voices of all kinds of communication subjects. The principle of unilateralism not only contradicts China’s goal and vision in global communication but also will restrict the next stage to participate in the pace of global cultural communication.

The main domestic challenge is that the existing immature communication system and strategy result in the discount influence of the global communication of Chinese culture. The global system is unified by economy, politics, and culture, of which economic and cultural globalization are essential components of the globalization process. The rise of the emerging powers will inevitably challenge the existing powers' authority, eventually resulting in conflicts and rivalries among them. According to Canrong (2015), China and the United States have fallen into the "Thucydides' trap" of the great power game. One of the most critical tasks for Chinese cultural communication is dealing with the vicious cycle caused by the "Thucydides trap" and winning the discourse in the international public opinion field.

From the point of view of the communication subjects, the work of mainstream media overseas is still dispersed like 'individuals,' lacking systematic linkage and support. Concerning non-governmental communication, although overseas students and overseas Chinese play a significant role in offline communication, this also leads to the lack of an authoritative voice in social media, Google, and other virtual Internet spaces. Regarding the content, the representations of cultural content failed to consider the context differences of different target countries, resulting in difficulty in identifying with Chinese culture. Finally, from the perspective of the communication channels, there are still no media agencies or new media platforms with huge international influence. In the new media field, although TikTok and other short video apps have a significant influence overseas, they are not conducive to disseminating traditional connotations and values of Chinese culture for their low content quality and messy content ecology. Besides, authoritative media accounts and the public endure malicious repression on Twitter or Facebook from western countries and platform systems for their different ideology, which, to a large extent, result in a discount on cultural communication.

Take the spread of Chinese culture as a window to promote the construction of a community with a shared future for mankind

In the digital era, the global communication of Chinese culture cannot leave the establishment and upgrading of cultural communication matrix. As the young generation of "Gen Z" users gradually grow into the main force of the Internet, their consumer psychology and social habits increasingly depend on online virtual space. Meanwhile, compared with media, political, economic, trade, and other official communication activities, the global audience more easily accepts individual communication based on cultural inheritance and value consensus. Therefore, the upgrading and changing of communication subjects and concepts play a significant role in the modernization communication of Chinese culture.

First, it is necessary to change the communication concept to 'global communication' with the value of openness, honesty, and equality. The words such as "external" and "propaganda" have led to a kind of "community boundary" to identify who belongs to us and who is the 'other' between Chinese and overseas audiences. In recent years, several scholars have realized and advocated that China's original international communication concept, which focused on "national image," should turn to global communication focusing on "building a strong cultural country" to realize the all-round and multi-field cultural communication system based on de-ideology (Ying and LiJuan 2021). Compared with "external" or "propaganda," "global" pays more attention to kindness, honesty, and equality based on respecting regions, cultures, and regional differences, which conforms to the shared values of all humanity and is conducive to carrying forward China's excellent traditional cultural spirit. Regarding the communicators, Chinese netizens, journalists, overseas, and students are all viable forces in the global spread of Chinese culture. One thing worth noting is that We-Media operators, especially video bloggers, are one of the most promising subjects of civil communication. We-Media operators pay more attention to feedback from overseas users in the process of topic selection and content production due to the revenue and profit consideration. Therefore, their videos and pictures are more diverse in content and more exquisite in form, often winning praise from overseas audiences. In addition, strategic communication logic should be introduced into the cultural communication process with the deepening mediatization of society. Explicitly speaking, from the macro level, particular institutions should be set up to provide scientific research and data support in annual strategic plans, communication events, and effect evaluation aspects based on the combination with the theoretical and practical realities. In the process of implementation, an operation mechanism led by the government and regarding the market subject as the core force need to be established to fully encourage all kinds of resources for promoting Chinese culture and global communication.

Considering the present situation of Chinese global cultural communication, the regional imbalance is a significant feature of the global communication of Chinese culture. Southeast Asia, Japan, South Korea, and other regions and countries have a high degree of acceptance and understanding of Chinese culture due to the common Confucian culture. Moreover, in Africa, the Middle East, Latin America, and other regions, more and more deep cooperation in infrastructure connectivity, unblocked trade, and natural resource extraction and sharing under the Belt and Road has laid a positive foundation for people-to-people exchanges. However, Western countries still maintain low acceptance and understanding of Chinese culture of their long-term prejudice and ideological differences. Therefore, in Chinese cultural commutation, more targeted communication towards different regions should be conducted. In Japan, South Korea, and Southeast Asia, classical books and historical allusions widely known by the public in these countries, such as Romance of The Three Kingdoms and Journey to the West, can be modernized in line with the current media ecology. In the Middle East, Africa, and Latin America, more attention should be paid to the role of enterprises and strengthening their coordination with communication through interpersonal interaction.

To sum up, a comprehensive upgrade and precision-guided communication in the aspects of communication concepts, subjects, and regional differences should be taken seriously, assisting with a short video, news, live broadcast, and local life application to construct the cultural communication matrix and promote the development of global communication of Chinese culture.

Conclusion

In his book, Communication as Culture, James Carrey (1992) divides cultural communication into two levels. The first level refers to the ‘transmission view,’ while the second and more profound level is a kind of “ritual view,” which refers to a representation of shared belief. Currently, most of Chinese cultural communication stops at the first layer; however, cultural communication should be aimed at improving cultural and psychological resonance to promote cultural identity. The most important limitation lies in the fact that the scope of this paper may be too broad. Further studies with more focus on the profound reason for industry development and regional differences, such as an ethnographic study to observe the actual situation of cultural communication, are therefore suggested. Although this study has its limits, it nevertheless highlights the importance of participation in the tide promoting cultural globalization and diversified development as an initial exploration from the macro perspective of Chinese cultural global communication. As a vital force in world culture, China should take openness, inclusiveness, and diversity as the thinking foundation, reshape the sense of national community, focus on shared human values, and promote the building of a community with a shared future for humanity.