Does anyone know what the deal is behind the recent East Asia trend, especially in media?

In My Humble Opinion
1

I’m new here. I regret having to join a message board in order to satisfy my curiosity on a topic, but I just couldn’t find any real discussion of it anywhere (which I find a bit bewildering).

I’m not sure exactly when this trend began - somehow I missed out on it (probably due to the fact that I’ve been living in Sierra Leone in recent years) - but there has clearly been a huge upsurge of East Asians (most especially of the Chinese variety) in US media in general. More interestingly, East Asians, particularly the women, appear to be the predominant (or even exclusive) choice for various forms of media promotions or symbols.

Even here in Sierra Leone, I’ve been noticing that almost every t-shirt I see that features a model’s face on it, it is that of an East Asian female. Very few exceptions. This is very different from before when it was mostly European looking models you see on t-shirts. Of course, images of models of African descent on imported t-shirts continue to be pretty much non-existent unless it is one featuring some celebrity like Rihana - and even then they are still rare. (You do occasionally see ones featuring African women but those are locally made ones.)

The bottom line is that there appears to have been a dramatic shift in commercial imagery recently - from mostly European to almost exclusively East Asian. This, by the way, can also be seen on the effect it has on Youtube trends in popular videos.

My question is what is the reason behind it? The surge seems too sudden and too ubiquitous to have been merely the result of gradual social changes. Rather, it seems more like a top-down thing. I tend to get the feeling that it started as a reaction against Trumpism - especially his so-called “America First” mantra. Thus it seems to be a form of globalization by the media. But what I don’t get is why it seems exclusively focused on East Asians.

I once heard someone claim in a Youtube video where they were discussing politics that it is in the interests of the US to incorporate Chinese people as much as possible into US society and culture so as to alleviate the rising tensions between the two countries in recent years. I don’t find that explanation satisfactory because I don’t quite see why the US would need to be so worried about a war with China even if there was one (which is extremely unlikely). It’s not like it is anywhere as big a threat as the Soviet Union was during its time, and even then the US establishment did not feel any such need. So this social and media trend or phenomenon in recent years still leaves me rather puzzled as to what its source is.

2

Well, I’m not in the US, but of course consume a lot of US-based media, and I haven’t noticed this. Can you provide examples?

3

Neitherscout it’s interesting what you wrote. Maybe an advertising industry decided they could have visual elements with dependable contrast in different postings. Maybe the Asian models you’re seeing share attributes that make this possible.

4

The vast majority of the goods coming into Sierra Leone are made in East Asian. By East Asians. And designed for East Asian audiences. Hardly surprising you’re seeing lots of that.

Switching from Sierra Leone to the USA…

The idea of a top-down phenomenon about anything originating in the US is itself highly suspect. Absurd more like. But folks of an authoritarian mindset just lurve to posit shadowy forces controlling the chaotic reality that is the USA. And some profiteers just lurve to pander to that crowd.

Are there enough people of East Asian descent in the USA that US media are now using them as models and targeting them as a directly addressable audience? Yep. Has US media in general become increasingly aware in the last ~15 years that there is more to “ethnic diversity in casting” for an advert or sitcom than just three white people and one black one? Yep. US advertising’s depiction of a backyard BBQ now often looks a bit like a UN meeting.

If you think you see a change since 20 years ago, that’s true. If you think you see a sudden change IMO that’s you noticing something you never noticed before or, less charitably, you falling into some propaganda-driven milieu intending to foment racial resentment.

Finally, if you are observing this trend more online than in the real world, I am going to say you’re observing the algorithm / AI effect of your chosen media outlets. They are watching what you are watching and they’re adjusting what they offer to what they observe you preferring. Of course in so doing they are also shaping your preferences. Whether they’re doing that shaping with benign intent, total indifference, or evil intent doesn’t much matter. People’s preferences are being shaped by the algorithms’ reinforcement schemes.

e.g If you go to YouTube as a fresh unknown user (hard to do) and pull up dance videos and click predominantly on ones features black performers which vids represent maybe 20% of the total offered, pretty soon black dance vids will be 75% of the total offered. YouTube still has all 500 million vids in the same ethnic mix as before. But the 20 or 100 they show you when you search for “dance videos” will be heavily biased towards the kinds they knw you clicked before. And of course when 75% of the vids you’re offered have black dancers, guess what happens to your watching history? It gets blacker and blacker.

The same thing is true whether you’re watching dace videos or political commentary. Or shopping for t-shirts. The instant they detect a trend in your interests, they’ll be shoving you towards that section of their infinite store of whatever. And once your surrounded by that stuff, you’ll further refine which sub-interest you want more of. It’s a positive feedback loop and real quickly they’re driving you far more than you are driving it.

5

LSL what you’re saying goes with what I’ve seen as a novice user on sites. On Straight Dope, I’ve even seen targeted advertising point at me after only a few visits so it’s a real practice. I have had to be discerning online.

6

After the 2020 Black Lives Matter protests, I saw some trend towards having more racial diversity in the media (e.g. in television commercials). I’m not sure how much of that was specifically related to Asian women, though.

7

I can’t speak for Sierra Leone, but in the US there has definitely been an upsurge of Asian representation in media. IMO this comes from two places - Asian Americans pushing for more representation and being more proactive about it, and Hollywood catering more to a Chinese audience (in China) because there’s $$$$ to be made doing that, given how huge a market China is.

8

Maybe because of this thread, my first thought was “We’ve always been at war with EastAsia.”

On a more serious note, I think it’s a bit of observational bias. Because you’re thinking of it, you notice it. You think it’s happening more often because you are noticing it more often. Plus, things like this are cyclical. In the 80s, one of the major broadcast networks hired an asian female as one of their main news anchors; all of a sudden, every local station had to have an asian female reporter. The cycle will change.

9

[quote=“LSLGuy, post:4, topic:995638, full:true”]
The vast majority of the goods coming into Sierra Leone are made in East Asian. By East Asians. And designed for East Asian audiences. Hardly surprising you’re seeing lots of that.[/quote]

I’m not so sure about that. A lot of used-clothing comes here from the US. But, that doesn’t matter. Even if we grant that t-shirts here are mostly, if not entirely Chinese made, that does not change the fact that the trend in the images on the clothing has changed dramatically. It does not resolve the question of why they have suddenly become almost exclusively East Asian when it certainly was not the case before. Unless of course the clothing manufacturers in China (or east Asia in general) have changed their policies for some reason. Which still takes us back to the original question.

Are there enough people of East Asian descent in the USA that US media are now using them as models and targeting them as a directly addressable audience? Yep. Has US media in general become increasingly aware in the last ~15 years that there is more to “ethnic diversity in casting” for an advert or sitcom than just three white people and one black one? Yep. US advertising’s depiction of a backyard BBQ now often looks a bit like a UN meeting.

If it was merely a matter of the media reflecting the modern trend in US demographics, that would not be an issue and I would not be asking this question. But it is far more than that. There really is a concerted push in recent years for heavy promotion of East Asian people imagery, most especially women. In fact, some aspects of commercial media, such as online ads, posters and avatars, seem pretty exclusive in their use of East Asian images. Is it wrong to notice that, or to wonder what the reason is behind the trend? You guys act as if it is, but it’s a simple sociological question.

If you think you see a change since 20 years ago, that’s true. If you think you see a sudden change IMO that’s you noticing something you never noticed before or, less charitably, you falling into some propaganda-driven milieu intending to foment racial resentment.

I think I am now starting to understand why this new phenomenon is rarely discussed and why people tend to be rebuked just for asking about it. So your fear is that it might “forment racial resentment” if it were so much as mentioned at all? I find that really incredible for so many reasons. In any case, I am pretty sure that it would lead to no such thing, if not simply for the very reason that people likely to wonder about it are extremely rare in the first place. The determining factor has absolutely nothing at all to do with whether the person is ‘racist’ (as you may find, racists do not talk about it either), but rather it has simply to do with whether the person is observant and just doesn’t conform as easily to social trends as most people do. It’s as simple as that. Besides, this is an insanely low bar for anyone to be invoking the concept or charge of ‘racism’ into the discussion. It’s insanely low.

Finally, if you are observing this trend more online than in the real world,

I am observing it, both online and in the real world. The issue of algorithms has occurred to me as far as the online stuff is concerned, in my desperate attempt to make sense of it, but there is absolutely no way that has anything to do with it. Nothing about my online behavior or choices has had anything at all to do with any specific group of people, least of all east Asians.

10

If you’re talking about things from Korea, such as k-drama and k-pop, there has been most definitely a push from the Korean government to support the promotion of those activities abroad that started a few decades ago. But I’m not sure that’s what you mean.

11

If that were true, it would be pretty bizarre that the media would respond to ‘black lives matter’ by having more East Asians represented in mainstream media. I’m not quite sure how the logic of that would work. But I doubt that was the reason. I think it may have much more to do with the media reaction against Trump’s anti-China hate talk at the start of the Corona pandemic. There instinct may have been to shield against that or render that sort of sentiment powerless by representing East Asians much more heavily in the media. In fact, this is one of the rather obvious suggestions for the reason of this recent trend that have been in my mind since I started noticing it.

12

I just clicked on Vogue, and there was a big picture of Sienna Miller. Then I clicked on Vogue China, and there was a big picture of He Cong.

IMO if you need “editorial models”, it is a lot easier to use whoever is around than to recruit them from a different continent.

Case in point:

13

One possible explanation could be that you recently started watching Asian pornography, and your preferences have been noted.

14

I’ve never seen a model’s face on a t-shirt. Any model of any ethnic background.
I tried googling to see some examples, and failed. (but I did learn I get get a photo of my dog’s face printed on a t-shirt.)

I think it’s this, and not “far more.”

15

I don’t watch pornography.

16

You and the other recent commenters really should try reading the earlier comments in the thread before posting. It is, after all, a very short thread. I shouldn’t have to point out over again the fallacies in some of the responses that have been made

17

You want answers to “what is the reason,” when the rest of us are still wondering if it’s even happening.

If it is happening, I would suggest it’s a combination of 1) more Asian models and reporters, 2) more Asian customers, and 3) less barriers due to discrimination and access. For many years (in the US at least) white people dominated commercial images far beyond their demographic proportions. I don’t recall to many people wondering why that was. Over time, we have “commercial imagery” that better reflects our diversity.

From your perspective, that’s not the reason:

I haven’t noticed any sudden “surge” as you describe. But even if you’re right, I’m not sure what you’re looking for. We’re surely not going to fess up to this kind of nefarious plot without some proper incentive.

18

Faces on t-shirts I remember from over the past year: Marilyn Monroe; Che Guevara (of course); Trump; Bettie Paige; Chadwick Boseman; various musicians on tour. Not many generic fast-fashion “models” whatever their phenotype.

…

Insofar as presence of “East Asian” faces in the media environment, as has been mentioned, in my own milieu (US mid-Atlantic and Puerto Rico) I have noticed only a gradually increasing visibility over years deriving from the expanding globalization of Asian media in general from Anime to K-Pop/K-Soaps to Chinese action cinema plus a small number of very popular American-market properties like Crazy Rich Asians and Everything Everywhere All at Once and the ever ongoing quest for diversity.

But not anything that struck me as a “surge”, unusual or unexpected or sudden, or that left me wondering why. Mostly if I even paused to think of it I’d have said “Ah, so there’s more Asian representation; OK, good” and moved right along.

It may be that in other locations for whatever reason more materials made in or targeted at the Asian market somehow wind up dumped in unexpected non-Asian markets (Belt-and-Road trade influence?), and it’s more sharply noticeable.

19

Disclaimer: I’ve never been to Africa. That being said, I have read the Chinese government has made massive inroads into Africa over the last 20 years for the sake of mineral resources and geopolitics, so it’s not surprising that a lot of Chinese people feature in African advertisements as well. The government might even have a direct hand in it.

20

@Velocity just above has probably nailed it. Assuming the OP’s perception is an accurate reflection of Sierra Leone reality.

We here in the USA simply do not observe what the OP is talking about. It is NOT happening here, at least not as an obvious abrupt step-change. As several of us have said.

Why they are asking a group of 90% Americans with a few Canadians, UKers, Aussies, Europeans, etc. mixed in to comment on their African experience is an interesting question. We do have at least a couple posters from southern Africa. Let’s ask them about what they experience locally where they are.

@scudsucker & @MrDibble can you shed light on the OP’s concerns?

The OP seems to have an existing and fixed idea of what answer they will accept. I can’t answer that, so I’m pretty well shot here.