The one thing I appreciate most is the journey tigress has had. Full of rage, entitled, on the path to becoming tai lung. She fights what she would otherwise have become and loses.

Equally, shifu sees he’s destined to produce nothing but tai lung over and over again. Shifu realizes his mistake and completely starts over from scratch and together, he and tigress step off of the self destructive paths they were on. I just wish they’d shown more of it on screen, that would have been an excellent set of character moments. They’re not deep movies, so needing to read between the lines is odd.

My movie about a bald eagle who learns how to shoot a school wasn't as well received

Not only that but Kung Fu Panda is beloved in China and created an existential crisis in Chinese film and art after its release.

"How come Western artists are able to tell a story with Chinese elements and be more successful than Chinese artists?"

Self-deprecation. That's the answer. The Chinese government is terrified of showing weakness. They won't allow China to be shown as weak or flawed. Comedy is entirely about self-deprecation.

President of the Chinese Opera: "Why didn't we make this?"

Unscrupulous Chinese filmmakers: "We just did."

I'm going to say having a fairly nascent movie industry is part of this. China was not exactly a movie making powerhouse in 2008. Basically only Hollywood was making 3D animated movies like that at the time.

Let's say due to the lack of infrastructure to make such movies a group of Chinese creatives pitch it to a Hollywood production company, guaranteed they get laughed out of the room for the story being too ethnic in 2008.

Almost every story about other cultures made in Hollywood (except for the past 5 to maybe 10 years) had to have a white person in a high ranking role otherwise producers would be afraid the story was too niche. Its a manifestation of Westerners (most of whom are white) holding disproportionate wealth and purchasing power. Thankfully the world is changing for the better, slowly.

No one group should be catered to like that. It creates a false sense of self importance and imbalance in the universe. Its one of many reasons why Nazis are making a comeback.

Ball's in your court China.

China's national treasure is Jack Black?

Like, it makes sense they wouldn't think of it (and also would struggle to do it well). America would think a story about an eagle learning to be a cowboy is too on the nose and we'd do it as such. But if china decided to do a kids movie that's as American as they can make it because it sounds cool and foreign they might manage to do it well.