>>511010648 (OP)Depends on your criteria as others have said.
In terms of industry, applied technology (technology actually implemented and integrated into day-to-day life), and food quality it has surpassed the west.
You can still live better in the west as a top 10%er but that's it.
>>511010932When people talk about western culture they're mainly talking about American/Anglican culture, which is a frankenstein's monster of different cultures including a large asian influence.
What are the pillars of popular western culture? Christmas (Celts), Halloween (Celts), Pizza (Italian), Hotdogs (German), cheese and wine I guess. Tomatoes are new world crop cultivated by the Maya or Meso-american tribes in the BCE, so Italians can't even stake a claim on tomato paste which is popularly used as a sauce, and the name ketchup is literally Chinese derived probably from some Chinese cooks that originally made a sweet tangy sauce out of tomatoes in the same way they made sauces out of other vegetables.
If you look at modern day Europe, aside from their ornate palaces, architecture, musical legacy, certain cuisine, gold/artifacts taken from other countries, literature, there's not much there left that sets them apart. All of their pop culture has been americanized/anglicized, from the EDM/pop concerts, and their movies that you can watch on Netflix.