/vt/ - Virtual Youtubers

>>25010740
There is a nuance that makes the full difference here and it is the change in stance by China towards the west (and vice versa) that started with the Hong Kong protests and got a lot worse due to the pandemics.
For the 20 years prior China and the West were attempting a rapprochement, with the entertainment industry leading the way, first with Kung Fu (Jackie Chan and Jet Li becoming western superstars amd bringing their movie industry with them) and culminating with Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon winning the Oscar in 2000 and being a smash hit.

Even at the internet, the chinese meme culture and the western meme culture was merging and lots of chinese produced memes (and games) were making their way into the west (like that Holotaker meme video combining Helltaker and Hololive).
But from mid 2020 forward, oh boy, if things didn't deteriorate between China and the west, SPECIALLY with the accusations of China having released the pandemics on purpose.
Hating China became one of the few things that were politically acceptable for both sides of the cultural divide and, conversely, Xi hardened his stance on the relationship between china and the west after the Hong Kong protests leading to an irreconcilable divide.

tl;dr: having any relationship with China (county, market and people) before and after 2020 is analogous the same with Russia before and after 2022.
Botan (and Nina) were praised for having lots of russians (and pandering to them) in their audience back then, but a new vtuber pandering to Russia today would be criticized.
Same thing for China and Nijisanji