I would say that term 'culturally damaged' also well describes American horror and murder movies, and European gay parades
.
China and Russia are 'culturally damaged' through the policies of their totalitarian socialist governments directly targeted the expressive arts in a way unseen before. While the USA and Euro 'cultural damage' you state is an effect of individual expression against a median society loosely sheparded by the state, Soviet and Chicom cultural damage was an enforced state policy against the individual to shape a particular type of society. Rather than allow individual expression, they beat everyone into a mundane state approved norm where conformance was more rewarded than excellence. By enforcing a minimum standard on all "workers", they effectively never developed a upper strata of elite "craftsman" in any expressive field (the US on the other hand marginilized our middle class craftsman into effective non-existance, I know that the craft skill of a 2013 shipyard worker is not as good as a 1980 one..."conformance to requirements at lowest cost" and pay based on loiter time being a big driver in that). With only a large base of minimumly skilled workers and no craftsmen to draw on, everything produced will have a drab sameness, especially if that sameness is enforced through government control. For nuts and bolts that's a good thing, for esthetics it is not.
Evidently Chinese will comprise increasing share of cruising tourists, and the manufacturing will shift there is well. I am just comparing the level of European engineers which is degradating, and Asian engineers are now highly motivated and their level is constantly growing also because they are close to production.
The logic of your first sentence doesn't follow. Permier class "cruising" is not a local function. Its whole basis is for
not being in your local envrons and looking at the same type of things. While there is a certain amount of familarity needed (i.e. dining/bathroom facilities), the whole idea is to go someplace extra-ordinary, similiar to the european Grand Tour taken at the end of high school/college. So while chinese cruise passengers will increase worldwide and even especially in south-east aisa, it does not follow that the ships will be built in China when the whole idea of the trip is to be exotic.
As to Russia, just last week I have seen recent developments in river cruising ships for country's internal waterways, and this market will grow. Right now they are developing 500 passenger river cruising ships. This is something You might not be aware about but these tourist routes are very popular among European tourists and the cabins are fully booked 2-3 years in advance.
Of course there is a cultural problem with understanding of 'luxury', but the gap is rapidly decreasing.
Concerning Russia, recently I recieved an email from Transas Marine offering digtal small craft charts for Russian Inland waterways. this is a huge geographic area. The market for russian inland liesure and commercial waterway craft will grow.
Oh, no doubt that both China, Russia, and even the USA build small river/harbour cruisers for
domestic use (usually as required by law), but to build for the
world cruise ship market those countries are not competitive for reasons other than engineering or cost.
Anyway, to end this hijack, I hope that DakotaH can see how the threads of Naval Architecture touch and run through the threads of the world. A Naval Architect needs to be concerned not only about the engineering, but the historical, economic, and societial issues that shape the design and operation of ships. It really is everything...keel to truck, cutwater to dunce cap. After being in the field, everything else looks limited and mundane. College (and especially Webb with its winter work that sends you all over) will open your eyes in more ways than just to the arcane skills of the naval architect, it will open your mind to the limitless universe....that is, we will soon be needing extra-planet ships and IMHO Naval Architects are far better suited to do this than aerospace engineers...they think too small.
