Stability, vitality and creativity appeal to all: China Daily editorial

Next Tuesday, when Chinese New Year arrives, it will do so not just on the lunar calendar but on airline booking systems, hotel dashboards and social-media feeds across the world. Inbound flight bookings to China in the past two weeks have surged by more than 400 percent year-on-year. For observers, this is not a charming anecdote about dumplings and lanterns. It is a data point about soft power — specifically, about attraction.

Soft power behaves more like a by-product of systems that work. China's rising international appeal, visible in the growing popularity of celebrating Spring Festival in China, is best understood through the lens of economic globalization, its governance capacity and technological diffusion.

Start with openness. China's visa-free and transit-visa arrangements have reduced the headaches for short-term visitors. In 2025 alone, foreign nationals made more than 82 million inbound and outbound trips, up over 26 percent year-on-year, with visa-free entries rising by nearly 50 percent. These visits matter. They convert curiosity into experience. And experience, unlike ideology, is hard to argue with.

What visitors encounter is a form of governance that prioritizes convenience, safety and efficiency. China's efficient high-speed rail network, mobile payment systems that work at national scale, and urban public services designed for very large populations are not abstract achievements. They shape daily life. The result is a kind of practical credibility. While delivery times in some developed countries are measured in days, in China they are measured in hours or even minutes.

Technology reinforces this effect. Chinese consumer products are no longer cheap substitutes but increasingly smart systems, at affordable prices. The country has more than 600 million generative-AI users, and its mobile internet ecosystem allows new technologies to be deployed rapidly across commerce, transport and entertainment.

The recent release of Seedance 2.0, an AI video-generation model launched simultaneously in China and overseas in multiple languages, illustrates a broader pattern: innovation embedded in a vast domestic market and then exported in usable form. This is technological diffusion, a key driver of soft power in a globalized economy.

Brands matter too. At the Milan Winter Olympics, Chinese sportswear companies are everywhere. They have positioned themselves inside global sporting infrastructure, adapting designs to local identities. That is how global brands are made.

Culture provides the narrative frame. The inscription of Chinese New Year on UNESCO's list of intangible cultural heritage and its designation by the United Nations General Assembly as a floating holiday are institutional acknowledgments of global relevance. But culture travels most effectively when it is lived rather than curated. Foreign visitors drafting couplets in Yiwu, watching woodblock printing in Tianjin, or joining long-table banquets in Guizhou's ethnic villages are all participating in social practices that emphasize family, continuity and community.

These values resonate because they are not narrowly "Chinese". Harmony, consultation, perseverance, pragmatism and mutual assistance are civilizational traits with global utility — especially in such divisive times. They complement, rather than negate, the dynamism that also characterizes contemporary China: pioneering entrepreneurship, flexibility in adaptation and a striking tolerance for scale and speed.

The generational dimension matters. Younger Western audiences are less mediated by traditional outlets that often frame China through a geopolitical lens. They rely more on social media, peer-to-peer content and first-hand experience. Much of the recent tourism surge is driven by younger travelers who then share their impressions online. This weakens stereotypes not by rebuttal but by firsthand experience.

From an economic perspective, this is soft power aligned with globalization rather than imposed against it. China's high-standard opening-up policies — expanding market access, integration into global supply chains and willingness to host foreign capital — anchor cultural attraction in material interactions. China is therefore becoming a major node in manufacturing and digital value chains. Cultural curiosity follows commercial presence.

None of this implies inevitability. Soft power depends on sustained governance performance, openness and the ability to learn from others. But the Spring Festival tourism boom suggests a reinforcing loop: openness invites visitors; visitors observe functioning systems; observation reshapes perceptions; perceptions generate further engagement.

In that sense, the globalization of Chinese New Year is not about more Chinese lion dances abroad. It is about credibility earned at home and experienced in person. That is the most persuasive form of power.