Labubu is the most compelling cultural export China has produced in decades. It didn't need a narrative or government support. It just needed a blind box and a waiting list. Pop Mart's genius is in the mechanic — you don't buy a product, you buy anticipation, the small suspense of not knowing what's inside. And that feeling crosses borders effortlessly. It's on Lisa's handbag, in queues outside Ohio malls, on TikTok feeds across languages and time zones.

Soft power has always worked best when desire arrives before questions do — Levi's making Soviet-era teenagers dream of another world, anime giving a generation a new visual language, K-pop turning fans into participants. China spent decades as the world's factory floor, useful but not charismatic. What's shifted is that the brands arriving now use price to get in the room, and product to stay in it.

TikTok is the bigger story. With over a billion users worldwide, it is the platform through which an entire generation of young Westerners encountered a Chinese brand, without ever thinking of it that way. That's the most efficient soft power machine ever built: one that doesn't announce itself, doesn't ask for permission, and runs on dance videos and thirty-second recipes.

Luckin Coffee doesn't just do discounts — the app floods you with coupons so relentlessly that paying full price feels like a mistake. By the time you notice you've built a habit, you are ‘lucked’-in. In Brazil, BYD took a different route: it bought Ford's shuttered factory and is now building one of Latin America's largest EV plants on the site. Chinese expansion isn't just commercial. It's physical. They're occupying the infrastructure others left behind.

Young Americans and Europeans tend to view China more favourably than their parents. They think of Chinese products simply as apps. That's what soft power looks like when it's working: nebulous and unidentifiable. Whether it lasts is a different question. Retention rates tell a more sober story — Temu holds onto 60% of its users against Amazon's 93%, and Pop Mart's model lives and dies by the next drop. The brands that endure won't be the ones that arrived with the most hype. They'll be the ones that quietly became habits.