We can see the cracks starting to show in US military and economic hegemony. To be sure, they're still the most powerful country in the world, but they can obviously no longer take on the rest of the world combined like they could in the 90s.

But more insidiously, the US still seems to be the hegemonic hyperpower in terms of cultural output. Even countries that are geopolitically at odds with the US happily and ravenously consume its art, entertainment, and literature, and to a lesser extent, those from loyal vassals of the US such as Japan, south Korea, and Western Europe.

It's not just due to reach. I feel that cultural output from the US (and vassals) is genuinely more creative, technically advanced, complex, innovative, and prolific than cultural output from the rest of the world. As someone of Chinese descent who doesn't strongly identify with American culture, this weighs on me heavily.

I'll compare American and East Asian cultural output since that's what I'm most familiar with.

Hollywood cinema is obviously the gold standard the world over. American films such as The Matrix, Blade Runner, and Fight Club are full of symbolism, innovative cinematography, and complex narratives. Korean films such as Snowpiercer, Parasite, and Oldboy are not far off. In comparison, the top Chinese movies such as The Wandering Earth 2 and The Battle at Lake Changjin are rather simplistic and don't necessarily have a lasting cultural impact, even in China.

Chinese TV is pretty good, with hits like Nirvana in Fire and Reset. But there has been no Chinese series with the wide reach, critical acclaim, innovative and sophisticated narratives, and lasting cultural impact of American series like Breaking Bad, Star Trek, The Sopranos, and Friends, or Korean series like Squid Game. The average Chinese person has heard of Friends, but only a vanishingly-small number of Americans have heard of Nirvana in Fire.

Chinese pop music is largely samey-sounding ballads. Listen to one of the songs by Li Ronghao or Joker Xue, and it could've been released today, a decade ago, or two decades ago. In contrast, Western and Korean pop music are constantly evolving and trying new things. Even more creative Chinese artists like Lexie Liu, Hyph11e, South Acid Mimi, and Absolute Purity are largely following established trends and not really setting new trends. Chinese music has no answer to jazz, rock 'n' roll, hip-hop, and house. The most identifiably Chinese music simply uses traditional instruments, but there's nothing particularly groundbreaking or creative about mashing folk instruments with existing pop music. K-pop, J-pop, and even LatAm, West Asian, and Indian pop have immediately identifiable sounds, whereas most C-pop sounds like it could've been made anywhere at any time. C-pop has little appeal even in places like Hong Kong. If you look at the HK charts, they're dominated by foreign artists like NewJeans Jungkook, Yoasobi, and Taylor Swift, with a small handful of HK and Taiwanese artists, but not a single mainland artist. That seems really shameful to me.

Japanese manga and American comics are considered the gold standard, with Korean manhwa a solid third. Meanwhile, Chinese manhua suffers from amateurish art, clunky pacing, unlikeable and selfish main characters, and boilerplate, tropey plots. If you thought isekai was overdone, wait until you see the endless cultivation stories in manhua. It's kind of embarrassing, really.

It's a similar story with literature, video games, and animations.

So, why is there such a large discrepancy in the quality of cultural exports coming from the US, Japan, south Korea, and Western Europe vs the rest of the world? Is it simply that these countries are richer so more people have the opportunity to pursue art, and studios have larger budgets? Is art like technolgical advancement in that you have to build up the know-how from the ground up? Or is there some cultural or governmental aspect in countries of the International Community™ that genuinely fosters creativity?

People often talk about this in terms of soft power, but imo what's even more important is cultural self-confidence. If domestic art or art from friendly cultures is good enough to satisfy one's own needs instead of having to import everything from countries that want to subjugate your own people, I think that would greatly boost collective well-being, sense of identity, and mental health.

On a personal note, this has been a nearly obsessive worry of mine for the last year or so. I've tried talking to a therapist about it but they just suggested that I try to stop identifying as Chinese and start identifying as American. Not very helpful advice. I don't really have anyone to talk to this about, so I hope I can start a discussion here.

It seems like in the last few years, the cracks were really starting to show in American dominance. The bungling of the COVID response, the BRI and BRICS chipping away at US trade and currency dominance, the failure of Ukraine to repel Russia, inflation and shortages in the imperial core, etc.

But it seems like many of these cracks have been patched up this year. I’m not sure how much is just propaganda, but economic indicators show that inflation in the US has cooled, unemployment is the lowest and the labor force participation rate is the highest they’ve been in decades (even accounting for underemployment/gig work), and real wages have increased amongst the poorest and richest alike (albeit unequally so).

US energy prices are dropping. US oil production is at an all time high, and the US is refilling its strategic reserves at a lower prices than it released them for. OPEC can’t retaliate without taking a huge hit to their economy.

Infrastructure, historically a big issue for the US, has been looking better as the Biden administration passed several huge spending packages to improve train networks and other things.

Ukraine is losing but the US has only spent a small fraction of what they did in Afghanistan, and they’ve debt trapped Ukraine in the process. The Israel-Palestine conflict has certainly turned sentiment against the US but it hasn’t resulted in any material change in relations.

China’s economy is stumbling; although there’s not a recession per se, unemployment is sky high, consumer confidence has taken a hit, and investment has slowed. Interest rates are about 3.5% in China while they’re about 5% in the US, which means China has less room to perform expansionary monetary policy than the US.

The US seems to have gained ground in trade relations. Several countries have pulled out of the BRI. Countries like Mexico, which for a while had China as their biggest trade partner, once again have the US as their biggest trade partner. FDI in China has slowed. “De-risking” and “friendshoring” have started yielding results. I know in the long run this will also weaken imperialism as it develops the productive forces of countries like India, Mexico, and Vietnam, but it might take a long time; even highly-industrialized countries like Japan, Germany, and south Korea are still subservient to the US.

People have completely forgotten about the US’ shit COVID response, but Chinese citizens still bear resentment towards Xi and the central gov for the zero-COVID policy, and the uncertainty over lockdowns was a contributing factor towards the reduction in investor confidence in China.

So overall, things don’t look too bad for the US, while they’re looking a bit uncertain for the other emerging “poles” like China, Russia, and the Middle East. I suppose the silver lining is that a lot of these gains came at the expense of gutting the economies of “allies” like Europe and south Korea, which means that the US won’t have as much to easily prey on next time.

What are your thoughts?