47
Western people in a nutshell
(lemmy.ml)
Looks more like America TBH.
OP forgot the racist propaganda against Japan in the 1980s and 1990s, that's despite Japan being a US vassal and a capitalist state.
I agree that Westerners hate China because it is a successful socialist state but they would still hate it just because it is a successful East Asian state.
China having success contradicts their orientalist view.
The Western Orientalist framework historically constructs China as static, decadent, or intellectually inferior: a civilization perpetually awaiting external modernization. Therefore, when contemporary China achieves rapid technological, economic, and political success on its own terms, it directly contradicts that orientalist view. Orientalism relies on a binary opposition between a dynamic, rational “West” and a passive, irrational “East”; Chinese success disrupts this hierarchy, revealing that non-Western agency, innovation, and global leadership are possible without Western templates.
https://newcriterion.com/article/edward-saids-ldquoorientalismrdquo-revisited/
Also I love how all the objectively toxic parts of East Asian culture are suddenly romanticized if it's Japan or South Korea we're talking about. Stuff like conservative family dynamics, overbearing work culture, predatory consumer fads, fat shaming and openly commenting on how people look, etc.
When I spend time reading about culture in other countries, especially Japan and South Korea, but also China, it sometimes sounds intolerable to me. Not because I think it can be said to be overall worse than the one I'm in, it's just bad in ways that I am not acclimated to and would struggle to tolerate. I grew up in the United States, and I have developed spiritual/psychological callouses that let me operate here. Maybe another analogy would be microbiome and immune response.
Anyway, I'm sure the reality is different. These are just the way I make sense of what I hear. After all, people do travel and manage to thrive in many places.
I honestly don't personally know any real-life person who acts like that - they're either just not scared of cool infrastructure, or they're the occasional 'patriot' freak who's nationalist/racist enough to consider Japan a threat too.
Leave the straw-man circlejerking to the rightoids, comrade.
Ok sorry :(
I can already hear the "Don't you know they're authoritarian??!!!!! 😡😡😡😡"
Well theyre clearly doing something right
Tokyo Sky Tree 😍😍😍
Except it's Shanghai 😡 😡 😡 (/s)
Also looks like fancy minaret
this post was submitted on 08 Jun 2026
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