argumate:

official-kircheis:

You can write America in kanji as 亜米利加, a phonetic spelling (atejj) – but that’s a hassle, so why not shorten it to 亜 when possible? Because 亜 is taken as an abbreviation, it’s already used to write Asia 亜細亜.

So instead the second character 米 is used, which is why in ​Japanese the US is called 米国 rice-country. Really confusing when they teach you that, and you wonder what the hell America has to do with rice, but it’s because it comes from a phonetic spelling.

Of course reading 米 as /me/ would make too much sense, so it’s pronounced /bei•koku/.

(and in newspapers you get extremely economic compounds like 米日 which doesn’t mean rice day, but “US-Japanese”, as in “US-Japan relations”)

China of course politely refers to America as “beautiful country” while China is naturally the middle/central kingdom, so Sino-US relations are 中美关系, or Middle Beautiful Relationship.