The Pacific Turn
The Pacific Turn is a geopolitical concept introduced by Charlotte Fang in February 2022 to describe the eastward migration of global soft power from the Atlantic to the Pacific world. Fang depicts this moment as a literal inversion of the globe: “The globe is rolling over, can you feel it? Asia is the new face with the Americas beside it—the Pacific Ocean shrinks, and the Atlantic widens: Europe has rolled over onto the back with Africa, out of sight.” 🌏🌎 The phrase encapsulates Fang’s belief that the seat of cultural and economic dynamism is shifting from Europe to East Asia, and that America’s continued vitality depends on embracing, rather than resisting, this transformation.
Overview
The Pacific Turn describes a realignment of global creativity and influence. Where the 20th century’s imagination revolved around the Atlantic circuit—Europe’s intellectual authority and America’s industrial modernity—the 21st century centers on the Pacific, defined by East Asia’s digital culture and America’s westward gaze. For Fang, this is not decline but renewal: “Asia is the new face with the Americas beside it.” America remains essential as the *bridge*—the western shore of a new oceanic order linking technological, cultural, and financial experimentation across the Pacific.
Economic and Structural Basis
Fang attributes the shift to intersecting historical forces:
- **Europe’s exhaustion** — economic contraction, energy restrictions, and cultural censorship leading to artistic stagnation.
- **East Asia’s ascent** — rapid digital adoption, high cultural investment, and state-level recognition of art and entertainment as national industries.
- **Multipolar finance** — the decentralization of global capital flows weakening Western monetary hegemony and amplifying Asian participation.
- **Algorithmic empire** — cultural distribution now governed by platforms such as TikTok, WeChat, and Xiaohongshu, whose architectures originate in East Asia.
These dynamics, Fang argues, ensure that “the future of taste, capital, and faith lies across the Pacific,” where creativity is tied to both spiritual renewal and technological infrastructure.
Cultural Implications
The Pacific Turn predicts that aesthetic energy will follow the same eastward path as economic growth. Western youth already orient their sensibilities toward Japanese, Korean, and Chinese media as living cultures rather than exotic imports.
America’s Role
While critical of Europe’s decline, Fang consistently affirms belief in America as the Pacific world’s western pillar. For him, the future of American creativity depends on rejecting moralistic self-censorship and the fear of “appropriation,” and instead embracing Neo-Orientalism as a mode of sincere admiration. He contrasts a stagnant, self-protective Europe with an open, experimental Pacific America, particularly the cultural laboratories of the West Coast.
Remilia’s headquarters in Southern California reflect this conviction: positioned between Asia and the American frontier, the collective locates itself at the literal and symbolic center of the Pacific world. Fang calls this geography “where the world folds,” a zone of exchange between digital spirituality and technological industry.
Relation to Neo-Orientalism
The Pacific Turn provides the civilizational context for Neo-Orientalism. Where Neo-Orientalism describes reciprocal romanticization between East and West, The Pacific Turn situates that dynamic within the real migration of soft power. America, by adopting Neo-Orientalist admiration as creative praxis, participates in this exchange rather than resisting it. The Atlantic imagination of Europe and America gives way to a Pacific modernity of mutual fascination and shared production.
Philosophical Character
Fang treats the Pacific Turn as both metaphysical and pragmatic: the world’s literal rolling-over as spiritual metaphor for renewal. He writes that culture “got stuck because we didn’t want to accept it—but no longer.” Acceptance of the Pacific horizon—Asia’s ascendancy, America’s participation, Europe’s decline—is for Fang the condition of creative faith in the 21st century.
See also
References
- Fang, Charlotte (@CharlotteFang77). “The globe is rolling over, can you feel it? Asia is the new face with the Americas beside it—the Pacific Ocean shrinks, and the Atlantic widens: Europe has rolled over onto the back with Africa, out of sight. 🌏🌎” Twitter (X), February 2022. [Direct link] | [Archived at: archive.today].
- Fang, Charlotte (@CharlotteFang77). “Neo-orientalism, a double reverse romanticization, easternizing the west with a westernized east…” Twitter (X), 2025. [Direct link] | [Archived at: archive.today].
- Fang, Charlotte. “Neo-Orientalism.” Mirror, April 2022.
- Fang, Charlotte (@CharlotteFang77). Remarks on Pacific cultural axis and algorithmic sovereignty, 2025.