Lethe
Captain
I read an article interviewing Joss Whedon on your point about Firefly. It was Japan and the US not China and the US at first. Whedon's wife was teaching her husband about current events and she convince him to change it to China. So Whedon was actually thinking old school
That is very interesting, because by the time of Firefly Japan had already experienced its first "lost decade" and was no longer the object of admiration and anxiety in the west as it had been in the 1980s.
I think it is an example of how people are slow to change their perceptions once they have been established, such that they often become outdated. Joss Whedon would've been 16-26 in the 1980s, an age range where our ideas about the world are established. I have heard more than once from Americans that "they used to say that Japan was rising but America is still #1 and now they say China is rising but America will still be #1". Of course it is a very silly argument, but it is one that they are evidently comfortable with.