{"id":873,"date":"2017-11-10T09:44:14","date_gmt":"2017-11-10T01:44:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.hiredchina.com\/articles\/2017\/11\/10\/foreigners-play-the-role-of-diplomats-on-chinese-social-media\/"},"modified":"2025-01-02T18:13:55","modified_gmt":"2025-01-02T10:13:55","slug":"foreigners-play-the-role-of-diplomats-on-chinese-social-media","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.hiredchina.com\/articles\/foreigners-play-the-role-of-diplomats-on-chinese-social-media\/","title":{"rendered":"Foreigners Play The Role Of Diplomats On Chinese Social Media"},"content":{"rendered":"<blockquote><p>By creating online content in Chinese about <a target=\"_blank\" class=\"inside_link\" href=\"https:\/\/www.hiredchina.com\/articles\/tag\/chinese-culture\/\" title=\"View all posts in Chinese culture\" >Chinese culture<\/a> on Chinese <a target=\"_blank\" class=\"inside_link\" href=\"https:\/\/www.hiredchina.com\/articles\/tag\/social\/\" title=\"View all posts in social\" >social<\/a> media, these <a target=\"_blank\" class=\"inside_link\" href=\"https:\/\/www.hiredchina.com\/articles\/tag\/foreign\/\" title=\"View all posts in foreign\" >foreign<\/a>ers have forayed into the political realm, bolstering their home country\u2019s reputation within China\u2019s borders and also generated goodwill toward their host co<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">By creating online content in Chinese about Chinese culture on <a href=\"https:\/\/www.hiredchina.com\/jobs\">Chinese social media<\/a>, these foreigners have\u00a0forayed into the political realm, bolstering their home country\u2019s reputation within China\u2019s borders and also generated goodwill toward their host countries.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><strong>Here is a list of some of them who have become well-known for their work and contributed to cross-cultural exchange:<\/strong><\/p>\n<div id=\"ez-toc-container\" class=\"ez-toc-v2_0_73 counter-hierarchy ez-toc-counter ez-toc-grey ez-toc-container-direction\">\n<div class=\"ez-toc-title-container\">\n<p class=\"ez-toc-title\" style=\"cursor:inherit\">Table of Contents<\/p>\n<span class=\"ez-toc-title-toggle\"><a href=\"#\" class=\"ez-toc-pull-right ez-toc-btn ez-toc-btn-xs ez-toc-btn-default ez-toc-toggle\" aria-label=\"Toggle Table of Content\"><span class=\"ez-toc-js-icon-con\"><span class=\"\"><span class=\"eztoc-hide\" style=\"display:none;\">Toggle<\/span><span class=\"ez-toc-icon-toggle-span\"><svg style=\"fill: #999;color:#999\" xmlns=\"http:\/\/www.w3.org\/2000\/svg\" class=\"list-377408\" width=\"20px\" height=\"20px\" viewBox=\"0 0 24 24\" fill=\"none\"><path d=\"M6 6H4v2h2V6zm14 0H8v2h12V6zM4 11h2v2H4v-2zm16 0H8v2h12v-2zM4 16h2v2H4v-2zm16 0H8v2h12v-2z\" fill=\"currentColor\"><\/path><\/svg><svg style=\"fill: #999;color:#999\" class=\"arrow-unsorted-368013\" xmlns=\"http:\/\/www.w3.org\/2000\/svg\" width=\"10px\" height=\"10px\" viewBox=\"0 0 24 24\" version=\"1.2\" baseProfile=\"tiny\"><path d=\"M18.2 9.3l-6.2-6.3-6.2 6.3c-.2.2-.3.4-.3.7s.1.5.3.7c.2.2.4.3.7.3h11c.3 0 .5-.1.7-.3.2-.2.3-.5.3-.7s-.1-.5-.3-.7zM5.8 14.7l6.2 6.3 6.2-6.3c.2-.2.3-.5.3-.7s-.1-.5-.3-.7c-.2-.2-.4-.3-.7-.3h-11c-.3 0-.5.1-.7.3-.2.2-.3.5-.3.7s.1.5.3.7z\"\/><\/svg><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/a><\/span><\/div>\n<nav><ul class='ez-toc-list ez-toc-list-level-1 ' ><li class='ez-toc-page-1 ez-toc-heading-level-3'><a class=\"ez-toc-link ez-toc-heading-1\" href=\"https:\/\/www.hiredchina.com\/articles\/foreigners-play-the-role-of-diplomats-on-chinese-social-media\/#Foreign_celebrities_in_China\" title=\"Foreign celebrities in China\">Foreign celebrities in China<\/a><ul class='ez-toc-list-level-5' ><li class='ez-toc-heading-level-5'><ul class='ez-toc-list-level-5' ><li class='ez-toc-heading-level-5'><a class=\"ez-toc-link ez-toc-heading-2\" href=\"https:\/\/www.hiredchina.com\/articles\/foreigners-play-the-role-of-diplomats-on-chinese-social-media\/#Photos_Internet\" title=\"Photos: Internet\">Photos: Internet<\/a><\/li><li class='ez-toc-page-1 ez-toc-heading-level-5'><a class=\"ez-toc-link ez-toc-heading-3\" href=\"https:\/\/www.hiredchina.com\/articles\/foreigners-play-the-role-of-diplomats-on-chinese-social-media\/#Photos_CGTN\" title=\"Photos:CGTN\">Photos:CGTN<\/a><\/li><\/ul><\/li><\/ul><\/li><\/ul><\/nav><\/div>\n<h3 style=\"text-align: center;\"><span class=\"ez-toc-section\" id=\"Foreign_celebrities_in_China\"><\/span><strong><span style=\"color: #e33737;\">Foreign celebrities in China<\/span><\/strong><span class=\"ez-toc-section-end\"><\/span><\/h3>\n<p><strong>\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><b>1. Canada: Mark Roswell\u00a0 (a.ka. \u201cDashan\u201d)<\/b><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/media.hiredchina.com\/FrpnYdptXBBhn68Pl9-RcyJoiI8b?imageView2\/0\/format\/webp\/q\/75\" alt=\"npr.org _Dashan(Weibo).jpg\" width=\"598\" height=\"418.6\" title=\"\"><\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/media.hiredchina.com\/FhCiJlIqtaHjAKCCbArV8Uc3Gnev?imageView2\/0\/format\/webp\/q\/75\" alt=\"npr.org _Dashan.jpg\" width=\"1400\" height=\"787\" title=\"\"><\/p>\n<p>Photos: Internet<\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<p>The Canadian comedian\u2019s Chinese stage name is \u201cDashan\u201d and he has earned a reputation as \u201cChina\u2019s most famous foreigner\u201d over the years. Besides being well-known for his comedy, he has been\u00a0named Canada\u2019s goodwill ambassador to China, after serving as Canada\u2019s <a href=\"https:\/\/www.merriam-webster.com\/dictionary\/representative\" class=\"broken_link\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">representative<\/a> at the 2010 World Expo in Shanghai, and\u00a0participating in every Canadian prime ministerial visit to China since 1994.\u00a0 He has 3.81 million followers on his Weibo.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><span style=\"font-size: 18px;\"><strong>\u00a0<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><span style=\"font-size: 18px;\"><strong>2. Germany: Thomas Derksen (a.k.a. \u201cAfu Thomas\u201d)\u00a0<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/media.hiredchina.com\/FhtGbWoT1CxsOWMEZUCcmc0MS03N?imageView2\/0\/format\/webp\/q\/75\" alt=\"Sina.png\" width=\"598\" height=\"852.9612403100775\" title=\"\"><\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<h5><span class=\"ez-toc-section\" id=\"Photos_Internet\"><\/span><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/media.hiredchina.com\/FuRdWnPEMywMH2jV-55hTEoUQMCa?imageView2\/0\/format\/webp\/q\/75\" alt=\"A Fu Thomas1.jpg\" width=\"1280\" height=\"720\" title=\"\">Photos: Internet<span class=\"ez-toc-section-end\"><\/span><\/h5>\n<hr \/>\n<p>Affectionately known as \u201cAfu Thomas\u201d to his Chinese fans, Derksen &#8211; who can speak\u00a0virtually flawless Mandarin-, is best known for his online musings of his life as a foreigner in China on his Weibo account.<\/p>\n<p>With a strong following of more than 5 million followers on the Chinese <a target=\"_blank\" class=\"inside_link\" href=\"https:\/\/www.hiredchina.com\/articles\/tag\/social-media\/\" title=\"View all posts in social media\">social media<\/a> platform, he became a cultural ambassador for both his home and host country when he wrote a letter\u00a0to Chancellor Angela Merkel\u00a0in July, before the G-20 Summit in Hamburg, Germany,\u00a0on how he thought Germany could learn from China and become a largely cashless society.<\/p>\n<p>In the following days, stories about his letter that went viral appeared in both Chinese and German media. It was a masterstroke that promoted cross-cultural understanding: his countrymen now understand one aspect of life in China and his Chinese fans learned what civic engagement looks like in his home country.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong>3. Japan: Yamashita Tomohiro\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/media.hiredchina.com\/FjAGBFr551p69lDPlX8PXAXV8xlT?imageView2\/0\/format\/webp\/q\/75\" alt=\"CGTN_Yam.jpg\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\" title=\"\"><\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<h5><span class=\"ez-toc-section\" id=\"Photos_CGTN\"><\/span><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/media.hiredchina.com\/FgZTB0SGPRsea9qYyPteidO5ijw9?imageView2\/0\/format\/webp\/q\/75\" alt=\"Twitter_Yam.jpg\" width=\"1172\" height=\"656\" title=\"\">Photos:CGTN<span class=\"ez-toc-section-end\"><\/span><\/h5>\n<hr \/>\n<p>A Shanghai-based Japanese national, Yamashita braved the headwinds of the then sensitive tensions of the Senkaku Islands (Diaoyu Islands) dispute that had grasped <a target=\"_blank\" class=\"inside_link\" href=\"https:\/\/www.hiredchina.com\/articles\/tag\/news\/\" title=\"View all posts in news\">news<\/a> headlines and ventured to China to see if it was really true that the Chinese don\u2019t like the Japanese \u2014 as he had heard that it was so on Japanese media.<\/p>\n<p>Five years later, the internet celebrity can speak Mandarin fluently and has gained more than 1 million followers on his Weibo account with his comedy videos and distinctly Japanese humour.<\/p>\n<p>While Yamashita has not spoken directly about the tense relations between China and Japan, he calls himself a \u201clubricant for China-Japan relations\u201d.<\/p>\n<p>He believes his work represents a mutual feeling between the youths of China and Japan, where mutual interests and understanding outweigh political antagonisms.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><span style=\"font-size: 18px;\"><strong>4. Israel: Raz Gal-Or\u00a0<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/media.hiredchina.com\/FszPCF74LpG3nd4jKAZ4mNnomgSq?imageView2\/0\/format\/webp\/q\/75\" alt=\"Raz_Internet1.png\" width=\"589\" height=\"336\" title=\"\"><\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/media.hiredchina.com\/FrvLx02F-cQorg0-egPUYsrKQxrV?imageView2\/0\/format\/webp\/q\/75\" alt=\"1.PNG\" width=\"633\" height=\"423\" title=\"\">Photos: Internet<\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Raz Gal-Or is the co-founder of the Foreign Research Institute in Beijing, an online outfit that aims to cater to the Chinese audience by making videos that cultivate understanding for young foreigners in China.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Their Chinese social media platforms on\u00a0Weibo and Miaopai have over\u00a03 million followers and they enjoy 11 million views per video.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Calling themselves the \u201cLaowai Influencers\u201d, these foreign nationals create humorous online videos about how expats live their lives in China. They also chat and sing to their fans in live-stream videos as they interact with fans on a personal level.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Thier videos are now a highly-popular alternative for young people in China, providing an insightful source of information to understand cross-cultural differences.<\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/media.hiredchina.com\/FlXXlKXBxtykYAuKbjvAxKMwIbVH?imageView2\/0\/format\/webp\/q\/75\" alt=\"GIC.jpg\" width=\"500\" height=\"543.2937181663837\" title=\"\"><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By creating online content in Chinese about Chinese culture on Chinese social media, these foreigners have forayed into the political realm, bolstering their home country\u2019s reputation within China\u2019s borders and &#8230;","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":25766,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[60,386,1185,1972,306,29,34,27,3557,826],"class_list":["post-873","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-funny","tag-china","tag-chinese-culture","tag-chinese-social-media","tag-foreign","tag-hiredchina","tag-jobs","tag-jobs-in-china","tag-news","tag-social","tag-social-media"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hiredchina.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/873","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hiredchina.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hiredchina.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hiredchina.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hiredchina.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=873"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.hiredchina.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/873\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":25767,"href":"https:\/\/www.hiredchina.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/873\/revisions\/25767"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hiredchina.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/25766"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hiredchina.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=873"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hiredchina.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=873"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hiredchina.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=873"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}