Basically there was a ton of fear mongering between the 70s-90s that Japan would overtake the US technologically, as heavy industry in the USA was suffering and Japan was making major inroads into the US economy through car companies such as Toyota, Honda, Nissan and Mitsubishi, as well as in electronics with Sony, Panasonic and Toshiba. A lot of Orientalism and "super-humanising" was going on at the time. Practically every second movie basically had American characters working hesitantly under Japanese superiors. I mean Blade Runner is the most obvious example of this on the movie side, it's pretty much Los Angeles under complete Japanese control.
The whole thing peaked in the late 80s when it was revealed that Toshiba sold industrial milling equipment to the Soviet Union, which was a violation of some bs sanction. With the fall of the USSR in the 90s and the rise of the early internet it died down as the media stopped pushing the narratives and the US could present itself as a tech leader with the birth of the internet.
The US absolutely dominates the software sector and the internet being a US invention is one of they key reasons for that.
The PR switched because the Japanese economy crashed (I suspect the US forced it through threat of hard power) and Japan has had demographic problems preventing it from growing in the traditional line chart way again. The CPC is acutely aware they have the same demographic crisis coming soon and is doing everything they can to avoid it with little success especially since the one child policy has left a huge generational gap and a cultural expectation of single child households in the current child rearing generation. If China can overcome this crisis, they become the mono power of the world, but if they can’t they become one of the major powers in a multipolar world.
Basically there was a ton of fear mongering between the 70s-90s that Japan would overtake the US technologically, as heavy industry in the USA was suffering and Japan was making major inroads into the US economy through car companies such as Toyota, Honda, Nissan and Mitsubishi, as well as in electronics with Sony, Panasonic and Toshiba. A lot of Orientalism and "super-humanising" was going on at the time. Practically every second movie basically had American characters working hesitantly under Japanese superiors. I mean Blade Runner is the most obvious example of this on the movie side, it's pretty much Los Angeles under complete Japanese control.
Oh yeah, of course. Slipped my mind.
The whole thing peaked in the late 80s when it was revealed that Toshiba sold industrial milling equipment to the Soviet Union, which was a violation of some bs sanction. With the fall of the USSR in the 90s and the rise of the early internet it died down as the media stopped pushing the narratives and the US could present itself as a tech leader with the birth of the internet.
The US absolutely dominates the software sector and the internet being a US invention is one of they key reasons for that. The PR switched because the Japanese economy crashed (I suspect the US forced it through threat of hard power) and Japan has had demographic problems preventing it from growing in the traditional line chart way again. The CPC is acutely aware they have the same demographic crisis coming soon and is doing everything they can to avoid it with little success especially since the one child policy has left a huge generational gap and a cultural expectation of single child households in the current child rearing generation. If China can overcome this crisis, they become the mono power of the world, but if they can’t they become one of the major powers in a multipolar world.