> Does eastern fiction not have this foundation of fictional dystopia from 50-100 years ago woven into societies consciousness?

No.

One Internet personality in China, who is a contrarian thinker and regarded as one of the best expert on information security, once said (after a murder case became national news),

> If you believe the opinions expressed in A Clockwork Orange, Minority Reports, or such, are crucial and something we must defend. Then, under this framework of civilization, regardless of what countermeasures we take, the severity of violent crimes will not reduce to something we are willing to live with. We must accept it, and believe it's the necessary cost of civilization.

> This is why I always think, the only solution we can expect is "Skynet Rising".

I think his take is representative to a large group of people. It can be dangerous.

Also, I see some people have no problems with Clockwork Orange style psychological torture on criminals. If the technology exists, they will welcome its adoption.

As I commented on a previous HN submission, Universal Declaration of Human Rights,

> Recognized "universal" values only came to existence by pure coincidence. The beliefs that the system of representative democracy is just, universal and progressive is only an illusion created by a short period of technological and economic boom. Just like the lack of consciousness in the biosphere, the norm of the human history is empires and authoritarianism, returning back to that state is entirely possible if people stop to believe.

Also,

> Part of western awareness towards, paranoia, fear, and wherewithal to stand against certain government behaviors and the totalitarian state is obviously awoken from and influenced by fiction,

These fictions can only be written in a world when elements of a modern nation prevails, in the west, it's already roughly 100 years after the industry revolution, and we had things like the BBC World Service, a systematic bureaucratic system of state control, and maybe capitalism. These dystopian Western fictions, such as 1984 or Brave New World, are largely a product of a modern world. Others, such as Philip K. Dick's works, are written in a transitional period from modern to a postmodern world.

But in the east, 50-100 years ago, it's still an age of monarchy and colonialism. And in the early 1970s, many people in China just got their first TV, there is no way that Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? makes sense.

> what maybe isn't and wont ever be as bad as our stories tell us it will be?

In my opinion, later cyberpunk works in the 1970s is somewhat a counterpart to the classical dystopian works, it describes a postmodern world, not modern world.

My favorite is Ghost in the Shell (original work & TV animation), it's a world of post-WW3 genocide, a world of universal surveillance, a world where the government can hijack your brain and body - many warnings in those classical works came true, but in less brutal forms, and somehow life still goes on, thanks to the domination of mass media entertainment and digital technology, and can even be better for some people in limited cases.

Its author Masamune Shirow said,

> Science fiction can't always describe the burnout world at the end of the century. The future is better to be bright.