What comes to mind when you think of China, Japan and South Korea?

This was a question posed in a second-year sociology seminar during my time at Bristol, and it has stayed with me ever since. We were split into three groups and given 10 minutes to create posters capturing our immediate associations.

Japan came first. Sketches of anime, sushi platters and temples appeared. My classmates spoke with enthusiasm, drawing on travel memories or aspirations to visit. A country that, less than a century ago, had been ostracised for wartime atrocities now seemed to exist in the Western imagination almost entirely as an aesthetic object.

South Korea followed. It was six years ago, when K-pop and K-dramas were breaking into Western markets. My classmates’ imagery was less about heritage than exportable modernity: carefully manicured idols, glossy beauty products and a polished consumer-friendly culture.

The tone shifted when it came to China: censorship, propaganda, surveillance, suppression of rights and freedoms. The list of associations was almost entirely political. What struck me was not just the negativity, but the absences. There was no mention of culture, food, travel or everyday life in a civilisation spanning millennia.

“Do you guys not see how biased your thinking is?” I asked, as the only Chinese student in the room. One person nodded, only to add: “The UK has a lot of CCTVs as well.”