Blockbuster Chinese video game Black Myth: Wukong sold more than 10 million copies within days of its release last month, and its success has been hailed as a soft-power win for the Asian superpower.
However, as a Chinese idiom states, “the intention of the drunkard lies not on the wine, but on other purposes”.
China’s push into the gaming industry also serves a “harder” kind of power: the drive to bolster domestic chip manufacturing in the wake of US semiconductor export restrictions aimed at hobbling Chinese AI research.
