For countries of their size and deep historical cultural influence, both China and India are quite lacking in soft power today. Even South Korea and Japan arguably have greater soft power.
India is still lacking in development. Nothing much to be said.
China's censorship stifles creativity in their media. Not to mention their internet platforms are almost isolated from the rest of the world. Even if they produce a good movie or a funny video, they are not going to be on the trending list on YouTube and shared by Facebook like Despacito, a Spanish language MV. The top Chinese-language music videos on YouTube are all from Taiwan with 23m people. From the comments you can tell they are watched not only by the Taiwanese but also Malaysians, Vietnamese, Japanese, Australians and mainland Chinese who jumped over the Great Firewall. How often do you see an American stumbling into iQiyi or Youku and do video hopping for hours? The outside world is still stuck with images of Kungfu from HK films when they hear of Chinese movies even though there's much more variety than that. Why?
For cultural influence to take place, you must have extensive contact with the outside world so other people would have at least heard of it. No point isolating and putting yourself at a pedestal.
For the Chinese who think Chinese entertainment is standing up to Hollywood and Wolf Warrior is going to be the next international hit; they won't like to hear me. I don't bear any ill intentions and in fact I wish the Chinese entertainment industry would flourish, but this is simply the hard truth.
but not much beyond that
