We keep hearing that the Chinese, rebuilding China from the ground up, with an infrastructure based on the success of Western models, are increasingly outdoing the West on nearly every front — economic, technological, and educational. And we also keep hearing that, although the 20th century belonged to America, the 21st century will almost certainly belong to Asia — probably China. A new exhibition at the Guggenheim, the retrospective of Chinese artist Cai Guo-Qiang (pronounced tsai gwo chang), suggests that contemporary Chinese artists are at least neck-and-neck with their American and European counterparts. If nothing else, it alerts us to the fact that the Chinese, embracing the West and upping the ante, are finally and fully making Postmodernism their own; and that they are hungry, eager to beat contemporary Western art at its own game. Watch out, Damien Hirst and Matthew Barney; “I Want to Believe” proves that a new and exotic Asian-fusion circus is in town.

Mr. Cai has obviously been paying close attention to the contemporary art world; he seems to know exactly what our market will bear. And he delivers. “I Want to Believe,” curated by Thomas Krens, director of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, and Alexandra Munroe, senior curator of Asian art, is as ridiculous, naïve, and trite as it is entertaining. And the show, which opens tomorrow, would be laughable and easily dismissible if it did not represent the Guggenheim’s belief that it is a serious endeavor engaging with serious issues.

In the sponsor’s statement for the exhibition, the Robert H. N. Ho Family Foundation remarks that “the Foundation wishes to highlight the impact of using art to comment on social issues.” And, boy, does this show have a laundry list of social issues on which to comment — terrorism, the Berlin Wall, rebellion against institutions and art movements, the plight of farm workers, the Cultural Revolution, Asian expansionism, even Cézanne and Mont Sainte-Victoire. But here are some of the problems: First of all, we have been inundated for decades with art that comments on social issues. Enough already: How about some art that does more than simply comment? Second, Mr. Cai’s bag of tricks is really nothing new: For all of the show’s variety — and it most definitely presents us with spectacle upon spectacle — the artist’s corny, illustrative, one-note responses are nearly always the same. More important, none of the works in the exhibition — which marks a full embrace of a newer and more entertaining form of banal Social Realism — engage or explore the social issues to which they refer. But, hey, maybe the Guggenheim believes that art without depth is more entertaining, easier to get, and easier to swallow. And maybe they’re right.

Mr. Cai, who was born in China in 1957, majored in stage design at the Shanghai Theatre Academy. He moved to Japan in 1986 and to New York in 1995. He is a showman, a shape-shifter, a shaman. He is also a 21st-century snake oil salesman. And he has transformed the Guggenheim into an amusement park, a zoo, and a Buddhist shrine — a space that blends smoke and fire, Taoist philosophy, propaganda, dragons, exploding automobiles, Chinese medicine, healing rituals, scroll painting, and calligraphy.

The list of attractions in “I Want to Believe” reads like a mix between an evangelical tent revival announcement and a 19th-century circus poster. Mr. Cai, along with dozens of assistants, including rock climbers, model makers, Chinese sculptors, and Japanese fishermen, has produced a three-ring circus — a carnival of an exhibition with nearly 200 life-size stuffed tigers, flying wolves, and clay figures that charge up Wright’s rotunda. There is also a shipwreck, disco lights, pyrotechnics, paintings made with gunpowder, videos of large outdoor explosions, and an interactive installation with a curving river ride and live snakes and birds. And every work in the show has a symbolic social message. In a 2008 remake of “Inopportune: Stage One” (2004), nine white Chevy Metros, six of which hang like one of Calder’s mobiles from the Guggenheim’s skylight, tumble through the air to the floor, as long shards of chase lights shoot outward, transforming the cars into fireworks. Here, the reference is to terrorist car bombings, as well as to the hypnotic allure and beauty of violence.

Mr. Cai is entertaining. He may be giving us something that feels a little new and exotic in this exhibition; he may even be an artist who, like a healer, has been brought to the world stage to help to cure what ails us.

But Mr. Cai is stuck in a rut. There is no actual ethical engagement or authenticity to his work. It is all surface, a variety of faux finishes applied to some of the most explosive and compelling issues of our day. The show mirrors and mimics and trivializes the serious subjects of the world, rather than engaging, or inspiring viewers to engage, with them. Explosive subjects are met with actual explosions; the horror of terrorist car bombings is trivialized into colorful fireworks; flying wolves are thrown against the Berlin Wall. Yet the Guggenheim seems to think that an illustrative and surface-level address is the correct — the desirable, even preferable — response. Mr. Cai’s art may be fun to look at; it may even seduce us, but it is all empty platitudes and empty beauty. In the end his art, commentary and nothing more, is seductive surface and ritual fakery. This show proves that where there is smoke, there is not necessarily fire.

Tomorrow until May 28 (1071 Fifth Ave. at 89th Street, 212-423-3500).