For decades, China has introduced itself to the world through tai chi, its cuisine and the Mandarin language. But a new cohort of Chinese products — online literature, web dramas and video games — has emerged as global exports, spearheading the country's modern cultural diplomacy.
Capitalizing on China's digital economy, Zhejiang province has become the core driver behind this "new trio" of cultural exports, redefining how Chinese content gains global traction.
Rather than encountering one-way cultural messaging, international audiences can now engage with Chinese creativity. In the process, they witness not only China's cultural symbols but the nation's cultural ethos, innovative spirit and youthful vitality.
Zhejiang's digital cultural offerings stand out with strong youth appeal, high interactivity and immersive storytelling, bridging long-standing cross-cultural gaps. The gaming industry delivers the most striking success story.
Homegrown blockbuster Black Myth: Wukong surpassed 30 million sales by mid-June, with overseas buyers accounting for more than half. The game has generated over 10 billion yuan ($1.48 billion) in revenue and set a record for premium Chinese video game sales.
In July, the title launched its global concert tour with landmark performances at Los Angeles' Peacock Theater and New York's Carnegie Hall. Featuring a fusion of traditional Chinese instruments — pipa, guzheng and erhu — and Western orchestral arrangements, the concerts offer global audiences an approachable entry point to the game's aesthetic worldview and embedded traditional Chinese culture.
This crossover live experience extends the IP's influence beyond digital screens, transforming symbolic cultural exports into tangible, immersive cross-cultural engagement.
Zhejiang's online literature sector has also secured global momentum. The China Internet Writers Village in Hangzhou is home to more than 350 top domestic authors, with a vast catalogue of their works translated and released for overseas markets.
One local novel, Lantern Festival, has accumulated over 1 billion cross-platform reads worldwide. Its English print edition is available in book markets across multiple countries, while its adapted short drama has been translated into more than 20 languages.
By the end of 2025, works from the Hangzhou writers village had attracted over 160 million overseas readers, with total clicks on overseas platforms exceeding 10 billion.
Meanwhile, the hit micro-drama My Hired Beau is on Fire perfectly illustrates a grassroots, interactive cultural outreach model. It follows a young foreign national experiencing rural China's Spring Festival traditions — pasting Spring Festival couplets, sharing family reunion dinners and worshipping the Kitchen God — weaving authentic Chinese folk customs into light, relatable and humorous daily storylines.
To eliminate cross-cultural misunderstandings, producers invited international students from diverse countries to review the script and revise potentially confusing scenes. The series accumulated 150 million global views within four days of release, including more than 80 million views from overseas. Through casual and enjoyable viewing, international audiences can naturally perceive the warmth and charm of Chinese folk culture and daily life.
This subtle, immersive communication model shifts global perceptions of Chinese culture from passive reception to active, voluntary engagement. Hangzhou's "new trio" of cultural exports has now reached over 1 billion young users worldwide.
Beyond superficial cultural icons, global audiences are increasingly being exposed to the authentic creativity, vitality and core values embedded in contemporary Chinese cultural content.
Zhang Yiwu, a professor at Peking University, said that this new industrial ecosystem is a China-centered, globally connected creative industry chain. As an engine of creative production, China is injecting new momentum into the global cultural market.
"The export of the 'new trio' plays a pivotal role in disseminating modern Chinese culture, reshaping China's international image and providing an efficient, innovative pathway to enhance global cultural communication and national influence," Zhang said.
Zhejiang is scaling the global presence of its digital cultural intellectual property by expanding from online content distribution to offline immersive scenarios.
In August, a rooftop concert blending ancient Chinese aesthetics and modern creativity was staged at Hangzhou's historic Qinghefang ancient street, bringing local IP elements, including TV series Romance in the Alley and Time Raiders, to life.
The province's digital cultural export sector maintains robust growth momentum. Official data show that from January to July, Zhejiang's exports of the "new trio" cultural items surged 60.1 percent year-on-year.
In Hangzhou, the provincial capital, the key industrial enterprises engaged in the "new trio" recorded 201.1 billion yuan in revenue in 2025, up 11.5 percent year-on-year and accounting for over 80 percent of Zhejiang's provincial total.
Xihu district in Hangzhou saw its cultural exports from 72 local enterprises reach $264 million in 2025, jumping 180 percent year-on-year.
In the first half of 2026, Hangzhou's cultural industry added 181.73 billion yuan in value, representing a 6.3 percent year-on-year growth, outpacing the city's overall GDP growth by 1 percentage point.
Meanwhile, the global expansion of Zhejiang's digital cultural exports has evolved from market-led industrial exploration into a national strategic priority, spanning China's 14th Five-Year Plan (2021-25) and 15th Five-Year Plan (2026-30).
The "new trio" has been incorporated into Zhejiang's provincial government work report for 2025, which prioritized building a high-quality development and export pilot zone for the digital cultural industry. And Hangzhou has set a goal to emerge as China's benchmark city for the high-quality development and global expansion of online literature, web dramas and video games.
To bolster industrial growth, local authorities have rolled out targeted support measures. In June, Hangzhou launched a dedicated cultural fund totaling 1 billion yuan to fuel the high-quality development and global expansion of the "new trio" cultural industries.
