We can see the cracks starting to show in US military and economic hegemony. To be sure, they're still the most powerful country in the world, but they can obviously no longer take on the rest of the world combined like they could in the 90s.
But more insidiously, the US still seems to be the hegemonic hyperpower in terms of cultural output. Even countries that are geopolitically at odds with the US happily and ravenously consume its art, entertainment, and literature, and to a lesser extent, those from loyal vassals of the US such as Japan, south Korea, and Western Europe.
It's not just due to reach. I feel that cultural output from the US (and vassals) is genuinely more creative, technically advanced, complex, innovative, and prolific than cultural output from the rest of the world. As someone of Chinese descent who doesn't strongly identify with American culture, this weighs on me heavily.
I'll compare American and East Asian cultural output since that's what I'm most familiar with.
Hollywood cinema is obviously the gold standard the world over. American films such as The Matrix, Blade Runner, and Fight Club are full of symbolism, innovative cinematography, and complex narratives. Korean films such as Snowpiercer, Parasite, and Oldboy are not far off. In comparison, the top Chinese movies such as The Wandering Earth 2 and The Battle at Lake Changjin are rather simplistic and don't necessarily have a lasting cultural impact, even in China.
Chinese TV is pretty good, with hits like Nirvana in Fire and Reset. But there has been no Chinese series with the wide reach, critical acclaim, innovative and sophisticated narratives, and lasting cultural impact of American series like Breaking Bad, Star Trek, The Sopranos, and Friends, or Korean series like Squid Game. The average Chinese person has heard of Friends, but only a vanishingly-small number of Americans have heard of Nirvana in Fire.
Chinese pop music is largely samey-sounding ballads. Listen to one of the songs by Li Ronghao or Joker Xue, and it could've been released today, a decade ago, or two decades ago. In contrast, Western and Korean pop music are constantly evolving and trying new things. Even more creative Chinese artists like Lexie Liu, Hyph11e, South Acid Mimi, and Absolute Purity are largely following established trends and not really setting new trends. Chinese music has no answer to jazz, rock 'n' roll, hip-hop, and house. The most identifiably Chinese music simply uses traditional instruments, but there's nothing particularly groundbreaking or creative about mashing folk instruments with existing pop music. K-pop, J-pop, and even LatAm, West Asian, and Indian pop have immediately identifiable sounds, whereas most C-pop sounds like it could've been made anywhere at any time. C-pop has little appeal even in places like Hong Kong. If you look at the HK charts, they're dominated by foreign artists like NewJeans Jungkook, Yoasobi, and Taylor Swift, with a small handful of HK and Taiwanese artists, but not a single mainland artist. That seems really shameful to me.
Japanese manga and American comics are considered the gold standard, with Korean manhwa a solid third. Meanwhile, Chinese manhua suffers from amateurish art, clunky pacing, unlikeable and selfish main characters, and boilerplate, tropey plots. If you thought isekai was overdone, wait until you see the endless cultivation stories in manhua. It's kind of embarrassing, really.
It's a similar story with literature, video games, and animations.
So, why is there such a large discrepancy in the quality of cultural exports coming from the US, Japan, south Korea, and Western Europe vs the rest of the world? Is it simply that these countries are richer so more people have the opportunity to pursue art, and studios have larger budgets? Is art like technolgical advancement in that you have to build up the know-how from the ground up? Or is there some cultural or governmental aspect in countries of the International Community™ that genuinely fosters creativity?
People often talk about this in terms of soft power, but imo what's even more important is cultural self-confidence. If domestic art or art from friendly cultures is good enough to satisfy one's own needs instead of having to import everything from countries that want to subjugate your own people, I think that would greatly boost collective well-being, sense of identity, and mental health.
On a personal note, this has been a nearly obsessive worry of mine for the last year or so. I've tried talking to a therapist about it but they just suggested that I try to stop identifying as Chinese and start identifying as American. Not very helpful advice. I don't really have anyone to talk to this about, so I hope I can start a discussion here.
For what it's worth, I think the vast majority of manhwa look like dogshit or well-and-truly cookiecutter digital clones of the same style (generously two, one for male-marketed and one for female-marketed). There are a small handful of really beautiful ones out there, but they are a rarity. The bulk of donghua I've seen look like about the same (low) quality as manhua. I can't remember one looking better, now especially worse, than the cookiecutter manhwa.
I think that Chinese "anime" is developing much more rapidly than whatever can be said of Korean animation aside from the overprevalance of chuuni cultivation stories (this goes for donghua and even manhwa too). Even staying in very established Chinese action genres, at least do more kung fu stuff! Sure, everyone has seen Five Elders before, but Laozi knows we've seen this Tai Chi bullshit even more and it's far less relatable than something that doesn't rely on spirit magic.
Anyway, Hong Kong has generations of action movies that are way better than anything of the sort produced in Korea, and afaik it's been a long time since there were great works in that category in Japan (yes, there's more than Kurosawa, but his shadow looms large). Yes, this was made in large part due to western capital so on, but it's not like it was made by Brits.
Also, I'm not really into it, but there are some very amusing action movies produced by the mainland. I remember seeing a cultivation-y swordmaster one where this dude was killing people by flicking drops of water at them or something.
I don't really have anything to add to the broader discussion, I just wanted to talk about this because I have no one to talk about it with and I thought you'd appreciate the input anyway.
Also manga and anime have been going downhill for a while* and as Japan loosens its pornography laws, that decline will go from a trickle to a flood, with the tumerous growth of smut eating up the quasi-seinen market even as it is.
*There are still really good ones regularly, but I think the quality is -- at best -- stratifying over time.
Responding to your actual post, yeah, art requires generations of development. You don't just learn how to panel and compose a manga from portrait classes, and there's only so much that a good portrait artist who has read a few comics can teach you if they themselves don't have training.