Hollywood movies are typically spoken of as examples of how the USA has been Americanizing the world. But it surely makes at least as much sense to say that many Hollywood movies are examples of the world imposing its own idea of the USA upon the USA, and of Hollywood acquiescing for purely commercial reasons.

As non-USA sales have come to loom ever larger in Hollywood budgets, Hollywood has more and more emphasised big budget, special effects, melodramatically simple movies, high on visual impact and low on complicated dialogue, of the sort that will do well in the USA, but, equally importantly, are also well suited to a global audience that doesn't necessarily have English as its first language.

It is striking how many of the Hollywood action movie stars of the last couple of decades have not themselves been born in the USA. Schwarzenegger was famously born in Austria and made a point of retaining his accent. Van Damme is Belgian. Stallone is an American, but like these others, when he is in action-man mode, he makes a point of not being greatly at ease with the English language. All these muscular superstars are more at home with the universal language of physical exertion and physical violence.

But does this represent a global triumph for the USA and for American values? Hardly. Yes, ideas are involved. It is a huge mistake to dismiss Hollywood action movies as ideologically empty. But these action movies have surely also reinforced the stereotype of Americans as adolescents, who use fisticuffs, magical super-technology and explosions as a substitute for thinking things through. And they have also, surely, helped to fuel that characteristic American phenomenon, American anti-Americanism.

The careers of Schwarzenegger and Stallone illustrate the American problem. Schwarzenegger tried doing witty and thoughtful romantic comedies, but had to go back to being a robotic robot-killer in order to finance his lavish political ambitions. Stallone, another very intelligent man, as is obvious from the fact that he wrote and directed the Rocky movies as well as starring in them, has also tried to make more subtle films, but again, without much success.

That Chinese film-makers now excel in this same genre is offered by some as evidence that the USA is now being globalized, by movies like Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon, and by actors like Chow Yun-Fat, Jet Li and Jackie Chan. But the success of such people really only illustrates that the action movie genre always was global, and always did cause global ideas - and in particular global ideas about the USA - to impact upon the USA, at least as much as the other way around.

Chinese success in action movie-making is likely to have similarly ambiguous results for China.