Ne Zha, the box office demon child slaying Hollywo...

Ne Zha, the box office demon child slaying Hollywood records & western hegemony

Monica Cheru-Managing Editor

Disclaimer: I prefer my pixels silently shaped into words with a glass of dry red wine, not the multicolored version that comes with a lot of surround system noise and buckets of popcorn calories.

But every parent—who has dedicated some years to civilizing masses of growing cells into proper humans that can use the bathroom and respect their betters-—knows that animated flicks aren’t optional.

Mandatory consumption leads to addiction, and before you know it, you are fluent in Shrek-ese, singing Hakuna Matata, and smoothly declaring that "Some people are worth melting for."

Unfortunately, in Ne Zha and Ne Zha 2, Ao Guang, the guy I totally melted for, was not all that. (Stay with me for the heartbreak.).

So yeah. Watching Ne Zha and its sequel wasn’t painful at all. But I confess I needed to find out why Western movie critics have not been falling over themselves to talk about the box office record smasher.

I guess because Ne Zha is China flexing. Like it’s not enough for the Chinese to be manufacturing everything for the Americans, including MAGA regalia. Now they have to go and steal Hollywood’s thunder too?

And just to rub that one in, China recently bombed the US film industry in the tariff wars. They'll be like, now that we have the Ne Zha duology and other stuff, we will be taking less of your Captain America offerings!

Yep, the loss of China revenue will deliver a punch in the gonads for the US dealing with an already declining industry.

But Trump tariff memes aside, it is easy to see why the Chinese theaters continue to fill up as people just have to return to watch the duet one more time.

An underdog to bat for? Check. Humor? It even comes with some gratuitous, revolting parts, like when Ne Zha swallows the demon’s goo only to be told that he could have rubbed it on his skin instead. Eww!

Awesome graphics? They got you. Some serious ass-kicking? More than you bargained for. Even Lady Yin, the one main female character, will make all ferocious feminists proud.

The plot has more twists than the old landline handset. Some you can see coming and others that will leave you gobsmacked.

But most of all, I love the characters and their stories. Maybe it’s because I see them on the global stage.

Take Ne Zha. His birthright gets stolen at the moment of his birth, and he gets the demon orb instead of the super duper pearl one. As if that’s not enough, the kid is so ugly even his loving mama can’t pretend otherwise.

The other kids won't play with Ne Zha, and the whole village hates him and fears his demonic power, which they deem too dangerous. You get it—China’s history in brief.

Think of the foreign aggression of eight, I mean 8, countries invading it at one point. Then there were the opium wars, which ended with the UK demanding Hong Kong and reparations because China said, Don’t deal drugs on our shores.

Then the country had to endure all the other nasty things during its Century of Humiliation as it got plundered, dismissed, and shoved into the “undesirable and dangerous” box.

“I am not the demon they say I am. I am who I choose to be,” says Ne Zha as he shakes off the demon child doom. Exactly what China has done with its awesome transformation - out of poverty into the second largest economy in the world.

In the end, Ne Zha wins by refusing to conform to his fate. He chooses neither the heavens nor the demons. He allies with Ao Bing, rejects the false gods, and fights for his truth.

And Wuliang, draped in Trump’s wig, is sending out his destructive tariff tendrils, screaming that Ne Zha must die because his power is too explosive for the world.

Sorry, Great White Chief. Most of us can see the deceptive glamour of the MAGA temple. And the cauldron of tariffs where you, the holy master, are openly trying to turn friends and foes into elixirs for your own immortality.

It’s clear to see that story that Trump and his supporters are trying to sell us — that only the West can lead, only the West can save — suddenly has a flaming spear jammed right through it.

And make no mistake — the Chan cult isn’t just American. It’s the entire Western hegemony machine. They roll out aid with one hand and sanctions with the other, but both are just whips to beat us into subjugation.

They chant “freedom” while orchestrating coups in places like Ukraine, which eventually lead to wars.

Which brings us to Shen Gongbao. The schemer. The switch-flipper. The guy who thought he was playing 5D chess while holding a 2D map.

He swaps the Spirit Pearl with the Demon Orb — thinking he’s rewriting fate. Turns out, he’s just another pawn in a bigger game.

That’s Zelenskyy for you. He bought into the myth after his team switched Ukraine leadership in a US-sponsored coup. He thought that fighting Biden’s war— being the “good” guy”—would bring glory. That NATO would protect him. That America would treat Ukraine like a brother, not a battlefield.

But four years in? His country is rubble. His people scattered. And Trump has finally said the quiet part out loud: “It’s a proxy war, folks.”

Unlike Shen Gongbao, Zelenskyy hasn’t figured it out yet. He’s still posing for war-issue GQ covers while his so-called friends pretend Europe isn’t breaking apart.

The “Alliance of the Willing” looks less like Avengers and more like a WhatsApp group of ardent fools whose admin is Macron trying to look like a big man. Yet we all know this little boy is being kicked out of the African colonial empire whose continued rape has kept France afloat.

Then there is Ao Bing. Groomed to be Ne Zha’s enemy. The righteous prince of the Dragon King’s court. Could this be the EU? That is finally realizing that they have been imprisoned by the US in a Catholic marriage of world dominance that only benefits the US.

I am sure they will never forget the Telegraph's derision inadvertently revealed to a journalist who gleefully shared it with the world. Yep, the dragons are only good for staying locked up with the monsters they are keeping at bay.

So Ao Bing decides to be Ne Zha’s brother-in-arms. Turns out, their real enemy wasn’t each other. And now the EU is talking to China about keeping the world safe from Trump’s madness.

CNN, the BBC, and other junk Western media invest in making our own media portray China as a threat to tell the story that China’s investments are traps, their influence is poison, and their motives are sinister. But look closer. Who is helping us build our roads and lay the fiber and shows up with shovels and cranes instead of drone strikes and lectures?

The “colonialism was better” brigade, please do tell me what your masters built for Africa once they no longer “owned” it. I will wait.

China didn’t colonize us. They didn’t loot our museums or rename our rivers. They came with loans, yes, but also with a level of respect that the so-called “development partners” never bothered to fake. And they have never betrayed us.

Oh, and speaking of betrayal — let’s not forget the Dragon King, Ao Guang. Regal, powerful, and tragically relatable. My personal animated crush (don’t judge me)—noble-sounding, but he fails to impress—cue in our own political class, Africa’s Western-obsessed elites.

The ones who refuse to believe in our potential unless it’s stamped by Washington or waved in from Brussels. They wring their hands over “debt sustainability” while flying business class to IMF begging sessions.

Ao Guang doesn’t just submit to the heavens. He raises his kids to do the same despite the constant betrayals. Sounds familiar? And he, in turn, betrays his people into accepting perpetual imprisonment.

Even when he comes out all noble and brave in the final battle of Ne Zha 2, does he follow up by joining the young ones to fight to the bitter end? No, he sneaks off to some depths to hide with his dragons.

African leaders, stop begging at the golden temple of Wuliang. Stop fearing your fire. And stop being elites who serve foreign altars while their people starve.

All we need is a little flame — and not just refusal to play the part they wrote for us, but to toss the whole book into the flame and create our own.

Give the scriptwriters some glory to put upon you in Ne Zha 3 by fighting the trade wars like real masters. Yep, Ne Zha 3 is coming. There are too many unresolved issues to just let the story end here, in the movies and on the global stage.

Want to argue with me? Find Ne Zha movies on your favorite streaming app or site, and then come back. I will be right here quaffing some blue lotus wine with Taiyi Zhenren.