The U.S.–China trade war has exerted a marked impact on cultural exchange, yet this influence follows a paradoxical trajectory: official channels for cultural trade and exchange have contracted amid tariffs and political hostility, while grassroots cultural diffusion and reverse cultural exports have found more resilient avenues to break through in the digital age. Put differently, the trade war has not severed U.S.–China cultural ties; instead, it has reshaped the direction and form of cultural flows.
Official Channels: Film Trade as Both a Countermeasure and a Market Reality
The most immediate cultural fallout of the trade war landed on the film industry. In 2025, China’s National Film Administration signaled it would “moderately reduce the import quota for U.S. films” in response to Washington’s tariff escalation. This countermeasure carried bite precisely because Hollywood relies heavily on the Chinese market. Statistics show U.S. film exports to key global markets are 3.1 times its imports, generating a substantial trade surplus, and China has long ranked among its most lucrative overseas box-office territories.
Beneath this effective retaliatory tool lies a deeper market dynamic: Hollywood’s competitiveness in China had already been eroding. U.S. films’ share of China’s annual box office plummeted from 36% in 2018 to roughly 14% in 2024. The proportion of original Hollywood titles shrank from 40.9% in 2000 to 18.6% in 2024. The flood of sequels and remakes has left Chinese audiences fatigued. The trade war therefore accelerated an already unfolding trend: the symbolic and commercial value of U.S. cultural products within the Chinese market declined in tandem. Meanwhile, the tariff war spilled over into physical film production. Tariff hikes on lumber, plywood, and steel used for set construction pushed Hollywood production costs even higher.
Grassroots Resilience: Digital Platforms and Unanticipated Cultural Exports
Against the cooling of official exchanges, grassroots cultural interaction gained surprising vitality in the shadow of the trade war. Black Myth: Wukong launched in the U.S. in 2024 and claimed major Game of the Year awards worldwide. Large numbers of American players took the initiative to study Journey to the West, launching research-driven discussions of Chinese culture anchored in the game’s settings, creating a remarkable phenomenon where “a game serves as a cultural textbook.”
In early 2025, right before the TikTok ban took effect, over a million U.S. users flooded Xiaohongshu, dubbing themselves “TikTok refugees.” They exchanged pet photos and daily moments with Chinese internet users, bypassing bottlenecks in official exchange pipelines. Equally symbolic is the cross-border spread of mahjong. Chinese-made mahjong sets sell for $300–$400 or more in the United States. U.S. distributors absorb higher tariff costs willingly, buoyed by robust demand and comfortable profit margins. Yelp data shows searches for mahjong clubs by U.S. users surged 4,467% year-on-year between September 2024 and August 2025.
These cases demonstrate that trade barriers can raise commodity prices, yet they struggle to suppress cultural curiosity and mutual fascination with alternative lifestyles.
Academic and People-to-People Mobility: The Slow Variable Eroded by Political Logic
Perhaps the most far-reaching cultural consequence of the trade war lies not in box-office ups and downs, but in the contraction of academic exchanges and cross-border mobility. The Trump administration tightened student visa rules and suspended institutional exchange programs, sending numbers of both Chinese students in the U.S. and American students in China sharply downward. The population of American undergraduates studying in China fell from nearly 12,000 in 2019 to 211 in 2021. Though figures rebounded somewhat in 2024, they reached only about 700.
Weekly direct flights between the two countries stand at less than one-third of pre-pandemic levels. Fees for O and P visas for performing artists have climbed to several thousand dollars, and expedited processing is often required to meet performance schedules, discouraging many arts ensembles from participating in major international festivals. Alison Friedman, Executive Director of the University of North Carolina’s Performing Arts Center, describes the current phase as “a quieter time of laying groundwork.” Cultural institutions continue programming, yet operate deliberately under the radar to avoid attracting political scrutiny. This “stealth mode” preserves some continuity for exchanges, but sacrifices the public visibility and openness that cultural engagement ought to possess.
Conclusion
The cultural impact of the U.S.–China trade war is not a one-dimensional story of damage or decoupling. It amounts instead to a structural substitution.
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At the official level: Film trade has retreated from serving as a bridge of cultural exchange to becoming a target of trade retaliation, with Hollywood’s retreat from the Chinese market hastened by tariff conflict.
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In people-to-people terms: Visa barriers and political vetting have pushed academic and artistic exchange into a slump; repairing these ties will take far longer than trade negotiations.
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On grassroots and digital fronts: Video games, social media, and consumer goods form an “invisible Silk Road,” circumventing politically erected checkpoints — and even gaining extra traction precisely because official avenues are blocked.
The trade war has not extinguished mutual cultural curiosity between the two societies, but it has transformed where and how that curiosity finds expression: from cinemas and university campuses toward game servers, social feeds, and mahjong tables. The long-term ramifications of this substitution remain uncertain. One measurable indicator to watch is whether institutional exchanges suppressed during this quiet phase can rebound rapidly once the political climate thaws, or whether spontaneous grassroots cultural connections have permanently displaced them.
