Since 2026, Chinese cultural products have continued to expand their presence in Southeast Asian markets, with film screenings, cultural-industry expos, book publishing and web fiction all advancing in parallel — becoming an important vehicle for China's deepening people-to-people exchange with ASEAN countries and its strategy of "telling China's story well." From the "China·Hunan Film – 2026 Malaysia Screening Week" held in Kuala Lumpur in mid-May, to the 22nd China (Shenzhen) International Cultural Industries Fair held in Shenzhen the same month, to ongoing efforts around book-rights exports and the "going global" of web fiction, cultural ties between China and ASEAN are evolving from one-way export toward deeper industrial cooperation.

The "China·Hunan Film – 2026 Malaysia Screening Week" ran from May 18 to 24, 2026 in Kuala Lumpur, guided by Hunan's provincial film authority and hosted by Hunan Broadcasting System, with Phoenix New Media Hunan as chief media partner; it was organized by the Changsha Film Industry Association and Letian Entertainment (Hunan), with Beijing Womei Cinema Investment and Malaysia's Womei Cineplex Entertainment as co-planners. During the week, five Hunan-produced films — spanning family, sports and historical themes — were shown in ten screenings across five Kuala Lumpur cinemas, including GSC BBCC LaLaport, showcasing the creative strength and digital innovation of Hunan's film industry. The screening week also featured a display of Hunan's latest virtual reality (VR) and AI-generated content (AIGC) production work at the Womei RnF cinema in Johor Bahru. At the opening ribbon-cutting, Tan Sri Dato' Sri Barry Goh, a director of the Malaysia-China Business Council, said the two countries enjoy close people-to-people ties and that cinema is an important bridge connecting their peoples; Hunan Broadcasting System's representative, Qin Hao, described the screening week as a representative cultural-exchange project under the Belt and Road framework, and said Hunan was keen to build long-term cooperation mechanisms with Malaysian partners to create works with greater international influence. Following the Kuala Lumpur leg, Hunan's film sector held a similarly branded "China·Hunan Film Week" in Nairobi, Kenya in June, with both stops forming key parts of Hunan cinema's 2026 global outreach push.

Around the same time, the 22nd China (Shenzhen) International Cultural Industries Fair was held from May 21 to 25, 2026 at the Shenzhen Convention & Exhibition Center. The fair drew 310 overseas exhibitors from 65 countries and regions taking part online and offline — the highest overseas-exhibitor count of the past three editions, up from 305 at the 21st fair and 302 at the 20th. Beyond the main venue, this year's fair set up 51 sub-venues across the city, with offline exhibition space spanning eight major halls, and for the first time established a dedicated zone for APEC economies, further expanding the space for international cultural trade. According to local Shenzhen media, more than 6,000 domestic and overseas institutions — including government delegations, cultural organizations and enterprises — took part overall, covering sectors from digital culture and film/animation to arts and crafts and cultural-tourism integration, making the fair an important window onto the growing scale and quality of China's cultural industries.

In publishing, cultural trade between China and ASEAN has also kept deepening. According to the "2025 China-ASEAN Book Impact Report" published by book-market intelligence platform Bookdao, 147 Chinese publishing houses that took part in the data collection exported a cumulative 3,395 book titles to ASEAN countries between 2020 and 2024, with the number of titles exported in 2024 up 4.2% from 2020, and the report's influence index up 183% over the five-year period. The report argues that China's publishing industry is gradually shifting from simple copyright-translation exports toward "localized customization" tailored to local readers, with web fiction and science/technology titles proving especially popular in Southeast Asia. That trend continued in 2026: on May 29, the 2026 China-ASEAN Book Culture Week opened alongside the Kuala Lumpur International Book Fair in Malaysia, with simultaneous overseas joint exhibitions set up in Kuala Lumpur, Vietnam, Brunei and Indonesia, further widening the channels for showcasing and selling Chinese books in ASEAN markets.

Web fiction is another important channel for Chinese cultural exports to ASEAN. According to a report released by the China Writers Association this past July, the total number of Chinese web-literature works exceeded 33 million in 2025, with overseas readership reaching about 250 million; the industry gained 40 million new overseas registered users that year, with active users spanning more than 200 countries and regions worldwide, while 2024 overseas revenue from web fiction reached 481.5 million yuan, up 10.68% year-on-year. In the Southeast Asian market specifically, a People's Daily report this past April noted that Vietnamese- and Thai-language editions of works such as "The Lost Tomb" (盗墓笔记), "Legend of the Buried Dive" (藏海花) and "The King's Avatar" (全职高手) have each topped local bestseller charts after release, proving especially popular among young readers in Vietnam, Thailand and Malaysia, with urban, romance and period/costume-drama genres particularly favored. An earlier industry report from the China Writers Association had put Southeast Asia's share of China's overseas web-fiction market at around 40% — making it the second-largest overseas market after East Asia — though that figure is somewhat dated and an updated, more current breakdown has yet to be officially released. Overseas-oriented platforms such as China Reading's Qidian International (now folded into the WebNovel platform) have long been among the main channels through which Southeast Asian readers access English- and Thai-translated Chinese web novels.

From film screenings to industry expos, from copyright trade to web fiction, Chinese cultural products are entering ASEAN markets in increasingly diverse forms — reflecting both the growing scale and quality of China's cultural industries and its broader strategy of deepening people-to-people exchange with neighboring countries and "telling China's story well." For Thailand and other ASEAN countries, Chinese film, television and web fiction have long held prominent positions on local bestseller and popularity charts, and cultural interaction between China and Thailand continues to deepen through platforms such as industry fairs and book expos. As more institutionalized exchange mechanisms — like the "Hunan Film Screening Week" and the "China-ASEAN Book Culture Week" — become regular fixtures, cooperation between China and ASEAN countries at the level of cultural industries is expected to deepen further.