Techno‐Orientalism 2.0: New Intersections and Interventions. By DavidRoh, BetsyHuang, Greta AiyuNiu, and Christopher T.Fan, New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2025. 380 pp. $39.95 (pbk). <scp>ISBN</scp> : 978‐1‐97‐883921‐2

Readers of Roh et al.'s Techno-Orientalism 2.0: New Intersections and Interventions will continue to be impressed by their provocative theses on a series of new digital media phenomena in a globalized world unforeseen in their early edition. Derived from Edward Said's Orientalism (1987), Techno-Orientalism 2.0 provides readers with an epistemologically conflicting perspective that this nomenclature aims to investigate. Roh et al.'s timely book addresses the contestation and negotiation between Western hegemony and the emerging challenges from the technology dominance of the East. Roh et al. 2025 and the contributors ask an important question: Will the Western hegemonic gaze of superiority persist nowadays, even though the rising East, perceived as the exotic and primitive “otherness,” is now technologically more advanced than the West in high-speed, renewable energy, semiconductor manufacturing, and even AI technologies? Using compelling evidence from their in-depth analyses of discursive cultural and media productions, Roh et al. concluded that Said's Orientalism has been transformed into fears of technological dominance of the East (i.e., Techno-orientalism 2.0). The East, according to Roh et al., has been transformed from backward barbarians to modern-day tech-aliens. The drastic perceptual changes can explain the mounting tensions between the United States and China, echoing previous racially-based hegemonic gaze and labeling of a brand new “Yellow Peril” (Chan 2024). The new Yellow threats can be best characterized by Asia's technological advances in social media, renewable energy technology, manufacturing capabilities, and AI, posing an existential threat and menace to the United States and Western civilization. Situated within the post-colonial theory camp, Roh et al.'s edited book adopts similar analytical and methodological approaches. Techno-orientalism 2.0 is more than just a newly coined term; instead, it was used by its contributors to study “cultural production and political discourses” as evidence of “the phenomenon of imagining Asia and Asians in hypo- and hyper-technological terms” (Roh et al. 2025, 2). Roh et al. framework has been easily adapted to examine China's algorithmic strengths in social media, renewable energy advances, surveillance and social credit systems, emerging technologies (such as biotechnology, digital realities, and e-sports), and an AI-driven economy. A remarkable extension of Said's “Occidentalism,” techno-orientalism similarly challenges a Western-centric worldview where “Asianized” high-tech dominance is portrayed as a menace. The book heavily borrowed from Anne Anlin Cheng's theory of Ornamentalism, which argues that Asians are no longer stereotyped as backward and primitive (Said 1978). Instead, recent technological innovations have reshaped and subverted Asian identities even though Westerners might still view them as “artificial,” “robotic,” “sleek,” “synthetic,” and “ornamental” (Cheng 2019). Readers of this book will continue to be impressed by Techno-Orientalism 2.0 for its theoretical rigor in studying today's new technology landscape. Roh et al.'s multidisciplinary book is a timely update in terms of addressing contemporary geopolitical situations and technological advances. Readers benefit greatly from Roh et al.'s adept theoretical integration of the latest post-colonial, ethnicity, labor division, STS, and media theories. This anthology of 20 essays is strategically divided into six thematic sections to analyze representative cultural production in films, digital games, novels, and TV programs. The first section (Chapters 1–3) emphasizes the division of digital labor in the Global East, where skilled and low-cost workers contribute to the cybernetic and platform economy (such as Apple's massive factories to manufacture its iPhone by Taiwan's Foxconn in China efficiently [Sharrow 2025]). The second section (Chapters 4–5) continues the book's intersectional themes by examining the racialization of Asians, their identities, and the Black-box-type political system enabled by AI, Big Data, facial recognition, and other surveillance technologies. To better describe the Asian rise in technologies as the foundation of techno-orientalism 2.0, Section 3 (Chapters 7–9) and Section 6 (Chapters 16–18) dive into the intersection of Sinofuturism, Afrofuturism, and China's very own Make China Great Again initiatives (such as Chinese Dream, Made-in-China 2025 and China 2098) and discursive representations in animation, documentaries, and digital games. Section 4 (Chapters 10–11) and Section 5 (Chapters 12–15) explore how gender and performance could affect “ornamental” expectation of Asian subjects from a Western gaze in the context of aesthetic, punk, disability, and environmentalism research that resonates with contemporary human experiences. Techno-Orientalism 2.0 convincingly argues how the imaginings of Asians as “Others” could erroneously intervene with government policies, technology initiatives, and global labor divides in the West. Nevertheless, the edited book projects more proactive and positive Asian images and identities that have been empowered by technology to reclaim their role to orchestrate a digital future (Sinofuture). The breadth of contemporary issues covered in this anthology is a strength that outshines Jin and Yoon's book (2025), which is merely dedicated to studying East Asian media culture in the digital economy. However, although this remarkable book claims to offer a non-Western lens of many issues that the post-COVID-19 world is currently tackling, the theoretical foundations of ethnicity study, media theories, post-colonialism, post-structuralism, psychoanalysis, and STS are historically developed in Europe and North America, and are inherently Western-centric epistemologically and methodologically. Many of its contributors also received doctoral training in the West. Additionally, the book does not include perspectives from the Global South (Asia). It lacks the voices of scholars from less technologically developed countries such as Bangladesh, Indonesia, Pakistan, the Philippines, Vietnam, and many others in this region. The book's strong emphasis on China's rising technology prowess ironically confirms the China Panic/Threat tropes as depicted in Western popular cultural production and discursive media narratives. The author has nothing to report. The author has nothing to report. Research data are not shared.