There is snow everywhere, and yet the West seems incapable of producing anything comparable. Quebec’s Winter Carnival, perhaps—but its scale remains strictly urban. This, by contrast, is a geopolitical spectacle. Another small chime of the bell, reminding us of China’s intention to position itself as a global leader across all domains—not only economically or technologically, but in terms of cultural and symbolic soft power.

While the West shivers and retreats beneath the blanket, China articulates a narrative of technical sufficiency, aesthetic spectacle, and coordinated organization. Drawing on a free resource—water that nature freezes without issuing an invoice—it erects an architecture that hovers between engineering and art, unfolding less as an exceptional event than as an organic mass experience: structured, predictable, and collectively assumed as part of the cultural landscape.

The precision of execution, the lighting, the security, and the careful maintenance sustained over weeks configure an image of efficiency exercised even upon the transitory. These are not the days of cheap imitation. China emphasizes what is its own—its nature, its climate, its coordinated labor—and elevates it to a new dimension. It is also positioning itself, at vertiginous speed, as a producer of exceptional cultural experiences.

These slightly flushed paragraphs were prompted by a small bear I encountered in the opening pages of The Guardian Weekly, Vol. 214, No. 2. A panda, naturally. An affective and immediately recognizable icon, especially for family-oriented and international audiences.

What surprised me somewhat was its placement so far north. The panda inhabits regions much further south, in the bamboo forests of central China. I venture a few explanations: because it is a highly exportable cultural image, powerful enough to suggest dominance and monumentality, yet sufficiently gentle to avoid appearing threatening. And perhaps also because, viewed through a lens of suspicion, it can be read as a counter-image—through its childlike appearance—to the neighbor’s bear, the Russian one, which has lost much of its charm since the days of Misha, the teddy bear of the 1980 Soviet Olympics.

Along the path various powers are taking to reconfigure a new multipolar order—likely one of shared leadership—China is practically unmatched as the world’s leading industrial power. By volume, installed capacity, and control over supply chains. By infrastructure and strategic technologies. This festival, for example, bears witness to its ability to stage massive, multinational cultural events, to sustain a vigorous domestic tourism sector, and to exercise a growing diplomatic capacity—one that anticipates the New Silk Road.

Its sophistication and intricately calibrated delicacy, however, make it heavy going for the flat spectator. It stands little chance against North America’s Wegwerf-Kultur. Or, as the affected French would phrase it, esthétique du prêt-à-mâcher. Yet this is the narrative that prevails globally, because the world has been domesticated and trained to consume it.

China, however, does not seem intent on imposing a universal cultural model. God alone knows what they want.