Both countries have very limited soft power for their size to be honest. In fact even South Korea dwarfs both of them in this aspect.
S/Korea would pretty much dwarfs any nation in softpower among genz ,South Korea is not competition but standard.
Disagree, Even China lags far behind in soft power. which country has China used soft power on successfully? In fact, look at Taiwan which you still consider your territory. You haven't been able to convince them to reunite back with you guys under CCP for over half a century now. At this rate a century will pass with TAIWAN STILL BEING INDPENDENT. To make things worse, vast majority of Taiwanese don't even want to reunite with you guys and the percentage of anti china Taiwanese seems to be growing with each passing year. Shows again a failure in any soft power for CCP. In fact i will say even Russia has a far better soft power than China to be honest. Look at how easy it was for Russia to get Crimea, and i will admit that the vast majority of Crimean's wanted to join back with Russia way from Ukraine.
In fact even South Korea is ahead. Koreans still want to join back with North Korea. The only thing stopping that is foreign powers, and to some extent the mad Kim dynasty. I believe there is a higher chance of seeing a peaceful Korean unification than a peaceful Chinese one with Taiwan. You will definitely need to use had power to get Taiwan back, no other way around that, especially under CCP.
I think you're mistaking state/political propaganda influence for pure soft power. It's determined by the propaganda disseminated upon the civilians rather than persuasion by appeal.In the case of Crimea, russian state propaganda is more wide reaching than CIA media,that's just fact.This is not the case for Taiwan where Anti- china propaganda from cia-NDP prevails.Taiwan isn't pisspoor like N.Korea so pointless comparison.
The US look like it leads in softpower simply because US operates on world language and has the widest reach,US pop music/movies are directly catered to public in almost every nation through influence medium like MTV/HBO etc.But the effectiveness is different thing. Bollywood is popular in Pakistan and it doesn't make Pakistanis wanna vouch for indians or flee to India,unlike koreaboos and weebs ,
.Even without pop culture boom, china can be pretty drawing in appeal based on ancient architecture,history,food and culture alone, now there's the tech gadget aspect and futuristic cities to adding to the attraction. In the cultural aspect, Korea can't compete with China..But in pop culture ,Korea/Japan provided china the blueprint. CN is very behind from Korea or Japan in softpower effectiveness but still ,it's the 3rd most effective pop culture softpower from asia. You look at popular asian tiktok fashion/trend videos in youtube all of those are are from Douyin China.
Indians are China's no.1 rabid hater on internet, yet,top comment section of any popular chinese drama on youtube look like this(all Indians and indian dialects-tamil/malayali )
These Indians would flee India for CHina given the choice. And you think China doesn't have soft power? russia leads.... ,CHina's one of the biggest player in other areas for softpower appeal like - Games) and in light-novels(a sphere not dominated by korea & japan)you will be surprized to know the size of reader base and reach of light novels.Many Chinese celebs are up there with kpop stars in fandom, they have similar visual and aesthetic appeal,so why not? China does have the blueprint.
After japanese manga,China/korea are head to head in manhwa/manhua popularity,actually china leads there.
These all stacks up,it's how Japan and S.Korea dominates softpower in genz.India isn't even in contention.
I think you just stress too much on the political part of the internet ,which are heavily influenced by cia media and teeming with state sponsored troll farms. The other side that actually isn't interested in political stuff( which is majority) might be way more positive toward china.
China's softpower is way underrated than it actually is due to CIA media's slander. Softpower and economy goes hand in hand,as China gets more and more wealthy its soft-power will rise further,even though CN might not be picture-perfect as smaller nation such as Japan and korea.Rather than china being weak in softpower,it's just that s.korea and japan are too strong in softpower.
