I dunno, I would think AT LEAST Jackie Chan is a household name due to the Rush Hour movies, and for anyone who grew up watching Hong Kong action flicks, they'd probably also know Jet Li at least, and Donnie Yen, Michelle Yeoh, and maybe Bolo Yeung and Sammo Hung too.
Yeah, Bruce Lee was born in San Francisco and had a US passport, but he grew up in Hong Kong. Point is, Chinese diaspora exists and can be seen for those who want to look. Projecting a viewpoint that no one knows about China or Chinese people because you don't want to think they do, so you feel slighted, and can then rage against that; it just seems kind of hollow to me.
I was hoping to talk more about (Mainland) China being uniquely bad at exporting pop culture, especially when compared to the success of Hong Kong, and to a lesser extent, Taiwanese pop culture.
The fact that nearly all celebs you mentioned were famous from HK film seems to at least confirm that.
Big Fish & Begonia was a good film that got a wide release in the west. Flavors of Youth is on netflix. Ne Zha was too I think. In animation at least they do better than a lot of countries. Mojin: The Lost Legend is the only live action movie I can remember seeing off the top of my head though.
The only ones I can name are from Hong Kong before the handover, off the top of my head: Wong Kar-wei, Jackie Chan, John Woo, Tony Leung, Maggie Cheung.
Authoritarian cultures aren’t known for freedom of expression so it makes sense there’s little cultural export. The same thing applies to Islamic countries, the iconoclastic bent kinda puts a damper on visual art.
Like how many of you can name a Chinese movie or pop star or TV show?