Digital Pathways of Cultural Soft Power: How Daoist thought Participates in Global Competition within the Digital Art Industry

Abstract

The digital art industry has become an important arena for cultural competition. This study explores how Daoist thought can function as an operational cultural logic within global digital art industries and proposes the concept of digital pathways of cultural soft power. Using a conceptual analytical approach, it examines three dimensions of Daoist thought—generativity (ziran), non-instrumentality (wu-wei), and non-anthropocentrism (wuhua)—across four illustrative cases of internationally recognized digital art practice, and develops a three-layer framework linking cultural logic, production, platform mediation and market positioning. The findings suggest that Daoist thought can contribute to aesthetic differentiation by shaping creative processes, authorship models and experiential strategies, but that these pathways are conditional on platform structures, audience cultural literacy and institutional mediation, while facing risks of aesthetic simplification and commercial instrumentalization. By shifting analysis from symbolic representation to productive cultural logic, the study contributes to research on digital cultural industries, creative economy innovation and the global circulation of non-Western cultural traditions.