They never really stopped bitching about Japan until China's economy blew up. It'll be all about China until some other country joins the 10+ trillion GDP club.
Its not just economics, there's also a racism component. Even though the Japanese and South Koreans are treated by white westerners as "the good Asians", they're still kept out of the white westerner club by forms of cultural othering that can be hidden and deployed when convenient. Japanese food is amazing high cuisine (except they're barbarians that eat whales). Korean pop music is great (except they're all tricking us with their plastic surgery). Etc, etc.
China's main crime as far as this dynamic goes is exceeding the West economically while having so much cultural confidence that it can simply not give a fuck how the West judges it.
On the plus side everyone will shut the fuck up about claims that Chinese research ships are all disguised whaling vessels.
Narrator: "No, they won't."
They never really stopped bitching about Japan until China's economy blew up. It'll be all about China until some other country joins the 10+ trillion GDP club.
Its not just economics, there's also a racism component. Even though the Japanese and South Koreans are treated by white westerners as "the good Asians", they're still kept out of the white westerner club by forms of cultural othering that can be hidden and deployed when convenient. Japanese food is amazing high cuisine (except they're barbarians that eat whales). Korean pop music is great (except they're all tricking us with their plastic surgery). Etc, etc.
China's main crime as far as this dynamic goes is exceeding the West economically while having so much cultural confidence that it can simply not give a fuck how the West judges it.
That seems like the kinda rhetoric that'd get you strung up as a capitalist pig by your hexbear compatriots.
it seems that way because you don't know anything about us. you'd think that would be obvious but here we are
As one of their hexbear compatriots