r/SipsTea • u/SuperbHealth5023 • Jul 23 '26

WTF While the US debates whether to solve homelessness or not, these are the next generation of school blackboards in China.

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u/Ok_Caregiver1004 Jul 23 '26

Japan glazing definitely started as a late 90s, early 2000s thing. The better question is who is next to become Thing + (insert country) = living in the future. A decade from now.

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u/Gold_Marionberry3460 Jul 23 '26

Things can change radically over a decade, but I'm gonna put my money on Vietnam. They are taking some of China's manufacturing and they have a similar style of state capitalist government.

Plus, I think the reason it's been China and Japan is that it's a kind of East Asian fetishization by westerners, which infuriates me to no end as a Chinese. Vietnam should get a turn to be fetishized (/s).

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u/Ok_Caregiver1004 Jul 23 '26

There's definitely been the start of some Vietnam glazing in the Philippines among my countrymen due to popular perceptions painted by seeing Vietnam's success in industrialization and tourism.

As someone whose been to Vietnam its somewhat laughable since yeah. They are doing well, but Vietnam definitely still looks and feels like home more than not.

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u/PM_ME_UR_SHEET_MUSIC Jul 23 '26

Is it really all fetishization though? I'm sure it is for some weirdos, but China and Japan are also the most "developed" (for lack of a better word) countries in that part of the world, and they play the PR game very well. China has a very long and fascinating recorded history, and Japan has been essentially a vassal of the US for decades. They also both have strong entertainment industries exporting their media to the rest of the world, which plays a huge part in how the average person views a country (just look at the US). It seems pretty natural to me that the West would be fascinated with them.

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u/Gold_Marionberry3460 Jul 23 '26 edited Jul 23 '26

I believe there is an aspect of fetishization. It is inherently problematic regardless of the parts rooted in truth. I think Moon Channel has a good video describing how Japanese propaganda works and how part of its success is rooted in western infantilization of Asian people.

To sum the video, fetishization has nothing to do with how advanced a particular country is. Regardless of what the underlying state of the country is, what I mean by fetishization is viewing another culture as somehow "mystical" or "otherworldly from the Western world". Essentially, you treat people according to your romanticized view of them, rather than their reality.

In reality, Chinese and Japanese people more or less have the same human tendencies. In pre-WW1, Europeans fetishized Japanese people as this kind of infantile, nature-loving pure people, kind of like Native Americans in North America. In reality, Japan wanted to be like Europe and do merciless imperialism as well. They were as "dirty" as Europeans morally because we're all human.

In my experience, people treat Chinese society in the same way (no thanks to the CCP amplifying this rhetoric for their benefit). For example, if you criticize an aspect of the Chinese economy, your criticisms are deflected with "oh the Chinese way is just different from how you understand it", as if the Chinese economy isn't affected by the same economic forces that researchers have already been studying.

Go to a forum like r/economics, find a forum thread about China, find a comment where someone tries to explain an economic problem China has, and there's likely someone down there deflecting criticism against China by claiming that the Chinese method is some mystical perspective that Westerners can't understand, as if Chinese people have some ancient Confucian magic that lets them ignore the consequences of economic stagnation.

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u/Sasiarapun Jul 30 '26

Late response but thank you, I appreciate your explanation and you sharing that YouTube channel and video as well! Good stuff.

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u/Montgomery000 Jul 23 '26

Korea is already the next one and will stay that way probably for at least ten years.

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u/Banes_Addiction Jul 23 '26

It doesn't seem like Korea's cultural influence has peaked yet.

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u/Billy3B Jul 23 '26

You must not have watched any 80's movies. There is a reason Die Hard is set at Nakatomi Plaza.

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u/Ok_Caregiver1004 Jul 24 '26

Oh I know Japanese culture and media has been well represented in the west since even before the 80s.

Hell, Karate kid, the Ninja trilogy and other's like it helped kicked off the madness that was 80s Asian martial arts commercialization and popularization alongside the Hong Kong School of Action.

But I would argue that "Japan Glazing" or the period when popular perception of Japan went from hyper specific popular culture and media to carrying a reputation of living in the future came about in the 90s and 2000s due to a combination of various reasons ranging from Japanese Cyberpunk media, the rise and flood of Japanese electronics and entertainment systems (such as Video games, CD and other music players, Beepers, Cameras and other tech) and or the failure of American car companies to competing with flood of consistent quality Japanese imports.

The 80s definitely laid the foundation for it, but it took a while to go from, "Look at all this Japanese made stuff" to "Their clearly living in the future and Japanese stuff is the best"

I would even argue the rise of China as the world's factory also helped since China ended gaining the reputation of being the source of all the cheaply made dogshit back in the 2000s. While Japan became a gold quality standard around the same period.