Cooperation in Competition: Soft Power, Cultural Hegemony, and State Willingness in the Sino-US Co-Production Meg 2: The Trench

The US regards China as a challenger to its dominant global order. China is no longer satisfied with America dominating the world as the single superpower. The US has relied on its global-leading film industry, Hollywood, to promote soft power and accomplish cultural hegemony on the global stage. Compared to the US, China needs more international attraction from the perspective of soft power and its film industry. Meg 2: The Trench can be seen as an attempt at cooperation in competition. This study focuses on the recent Sino-US co-production, Meg 2: The Trench, released in 2023, in the political context of competition between the two countries. The research objective is to evaluate the Chinese culture, values and foreign policies Meg 2: The Trench promotes. The central problem to be addressed in this research is the Chinese soft power promotion of the recently released Sino-US co-production Meg 2: The Trench. This research employed Algirdas Julien Greimas’s Actantial Model (1983) to critically analyse the portrayal of the characters and narratives in Meg 2: The Trench with close textual analysis as the method for this research. We found that Hollywood made concessions regarding its values propaganda. Meg 2: The Trench emphasises China`s official culture, values and foreign policies, but its essence is individual heroism. Keywords: Soft power, cultural hegemony Sino-US co-production, Sino-US relations, Meg 2: The Trench, Actantial Model.