Zepeng Zhou

While the West has long dominated cultural globalization, this project explores how Chinese digital platforms are reshaping global cultural production. Moving beyond macro narratives of geopolitics and market processes, it adopts a micro-approach to examine how creative labor reconfigures platform globalization. Focusing on the emerging China–US short drama industry, I analyze how Chinese creative workers navigate political, cultural, and technological tensions, and how they mediate platform governance and China’s soft power to capture audience attention. Through ethnography, the study advances discussions on Global China by highlighting China’s cultural influence in Western countries. This project also reveals the continuities and ruptures of platform and state power across borders.