The article examines the global popularity of Chinese romantic dramas, which are viewed as a tool of China's targeted stratagem cultural policy. The authors demonstrate that the Chinese film industry not only borrows Western formats but strategically appropriates and recodes them, creating a hybrid product that subtly promotes national identity and state-sanctioned values. The theoretical framework for this study is the concept of stratagem thinking, which derives from Sun Tzu's treatise and the works of François Julien. Unlike Western linear strategy, stratagem implies achieving a goal through indirect action and mimicry, enabling to view dramas as complex constructs where external appeal serves as a shell for the viewer's value programming. Using five key plot tropes of romantic dramas (unequal marriage, sham marriage, error and responsibility, correction through love, family intervention), the authors demonstrate how global narrative patterns are systematically recoded into conduits of the Chinese value matrix - the primacy of family, collective harmony, and duty to elders. Particular attention is paid to the visual and behavioral aesthetics of dramas (chastity, restraint, the cult of beauty) as a second, non-verbal level of stratagem influence, as well as the regulatory role of the NRTA as a censor, also operating within the framework of the stratagem approach. The conclusion is that by adapting and reimagining global media formats, the Chinese cultural industry is building an effective model for promoting traditional values in a modern package
