Eastward Drift: Soft Power of Accessibility

Since WWII, America has been the world’s cultural superpower. During that time America unintentionally discovered that sending a navy boat full of ice cream to its soldiers in the Pacific (Siegel, 2018) or air dropping chocolate to children in Berlin (Eschner, 2017) opened a lot of doors not just politically but most importantly economically. Quickly, it learned that it could replicate that effect with Hollywood blockbusters, pop stars and lastly with fast food designed to be deliciously addictive like Coca-Cola and McDonald’s.

With this new way of controlling power by creating monetizable culture, it spread American influence worldwide.

Today, the same mechanism that from Elvis to Britney Spears had fed the world with ideas of abundance and heroism, has now reached a dangerous halt. Trade wars, book bans, and cultural battles have turned America inward just as a new cultural power has reached maturity in East Asia. If you are a Gen-Z, these cultural moments have most likely been present in your life growing up whether you were a fan or not: Pokémon, Studio Ghibli, fan-translated manga and anime divided into 4 parts per episode on YouTube or full series on pirated websites. For the past decade, you have seen the rise of K-pop, K-Beauty, and K-Dramas, even on mainstream streaming services like Netflix, which have their own exclusive series. And now Chinese entertainment is setting a new all-translated pace with free access to 30+ episodes long dramas on YouTube as well as same day English releases of games, such as Love and Deepspace, and manhuas, like Love by Mistake.

For Gen-Z, this is the usual way of entertainment. For conservative politicians, this is the new frontier in the war for power hegemony.

While the U.S. debates the identity politics at home; Japan, Korea, and China have been reshaping global imagination in the West and beyond. This rise cannot be summed up in being just about aesthetics and capitalism. It is a deliberate political strategy that is only able to be so effective because of the digital and commercial infrastructure present in our daily lives. In this new age, culture as soft power is about how to quickly captivate and control a loyal fanbase that is unable to distinguish fiction from reality.

Faces of no-faces from Studio Ghibli's "Sprited Away". Photo by MW on Unsplash

The “Cool” Modern World

Up until the early 2000s, American culture defined aspiration. Hollywood films projected independence, individuality, and rebelliousness, core American spirit, while pop stars gave teens the sense that they were part of a “cool” modern world. Entertainment had also merged with cutting-edge technology through innovative companies like Apple and Google. This mix was the most valuable part of the equation. Unfortunately, Hollywood didn’t catch that and rather capitalized on cool teens and consumerism. As soon as the checks came to the boardrooms, studio executives believed they had an evergreen formula. However, the repetition became a weakness: sequels multiplied, risks dwindled, technological design stagnated. Thus, the American content became increasingly locked behind paywalls or geo-restrictions. As a last blow to its global image: America’s internal identity war disillusioned outsiders, making the rest of the world see that Hollywood was just Hollywood and that American teens did not have a chance at the American dream anymore.

America’s new cultural rules have left a cultural power vacuum globally, which East Asia has taken hold of. The “cool” modern world has started to shift. Now, Americans have become digital refugees, migrating from TikTok to Xiaohongshu and discovering modern China much like they once did Japan in the late 2000s with the rise of Technozen culture and flip phones (Baptista et al., 2025).

The difference between American and East Asian cultural power lies in nearly three decades of steady influence built into the everyday lives of Gen-Z and millennials through modern technology. American studios relied on spectacle to capture attention, while East Asian media leveraged accessibility, distribution, and fan engagement to create a sustained and participatory cultural presence.

Infrastructure is Soft Power

Now we need to understand how East Asia managed to crack the code over the last three decades. What may have begun as a combination of luck and the cultural curiosity of an emerging Western consumer market has since evolved into a deliberate political strategy, shaped by political advisors and experts in cultural ministries. To understand what I mean by infrastructure, and how East Asia’s cultural exports have developed over the past 30 years, we can look at the history of its media.

Japanese content, particularly anime and manga, was the first to reach global audiences. It initially spread through piracy, fan-made subtitles, and conventions, gradually building a loyal and widespread international fan base.

So, what do I mean by “Infrastructure is Soft Power”? It means that today, soft power depends on digital infrastructure, the systems that make cultural products widely accessible by removing paywalls and geo-restrictions. When these products are released with high-quality translations across many languages, not just English or other European ones, the result is the emergence of a true media powerhouse. In this context, media distribution, pricing, and subtitling become key factors that determine how effectively a culture can reach and influence global audiences. Subtitling is also part of the generational divide as Chuba (2023) states in the Hollywood Reporter:

“While closed captioning was once a niche service used mostly by hard-of-hearing viewers, subtitles have seen an explosion in the streaming age; deaf-led charity Stagetext found in a 2021 survey that 80 percent of 18- to 24-year-olds use subtitles some or all of the time when watching TV on any device, and only 10 percent of those surveyed were deaf or hard of hearing. It also found that only 23 percent of those in the 56-75 age group use captions, despite a higher rate of hearing loss.’’

Therefore, East Asian media, whether more protectionist like Japan's or capitalist like China’s, has found its own magic formula and throughout the past three decades. They have expanded into physical goods other than merch via places like H-mart, Muji, Daiso and websites like Mercari, Shopee and Temu.

For everyday Americans, the influence of East Asia now goes beyond screens, it is shaping the way they shop and live. For instance, inflation and tariffs have driven people to Asian grocery chains like H-Mart, where products from rice to skincare are often cheaper and better stocked than at “traditional” American supermarkets.

What once felt like an immigrant space is now a mainstream destination for Gen-Z and millennials who arrive first for affordability and stay for discovery: Korean snacks, Japanese stationery, Chinese teas.

One Redditor wrote: “I live in the South-Eastern United States. I started going to Asian markets because I wanted to pick up some ingredients and learn how to make some of my favorite dishes since going to restaurants has become a less affordable option. Now I'm there every week. It's become one of my main stores to shop at.”(@_CowboyFromHell_, 2023)

Accessibility equals diplomacy in the digital age. By removing barriers, East Asia transforms digital infrastructure into the silk road of soft power. Cultural hegemony now is determined less by who tells the story, and more by who makes it easiest to watch.

A sales stall displaying stuffed anime characters. Photo by Hoyoun Lee on Unsplash

Everything is Cultural, and Culture is Power

When we discuss cultural power or any other form of power, we are discussing power hegemony; what is exciting from a political scientist point of view is that we truly have not seen such a strong shift since the invention of the steam machine. We are going to see a new age of immigration. It’s also going to be interesting to see how it will shape the creation of new political schools of thought: think Enlightenment in France and the introduction of coffee and tea (lowering the consumption of alcohol) which were being imported together with a culture of coffeehouses and teahouses.

We now see the same with Gen-Z and “the village” which is nothing less than internet slang for the communal ethos/Gemeinschaft, a concept illuminated by exposure to Asian culture and its communal thinking. In sum, in this new digital age we are not just seeing a shift in power but a new era of political thinking emerging alongside power hegemony struggles in a cultural battlefield.

Bibliography

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