Lol. You know, I was probing a book fair this past weekend and I ended up buying a book about orientalism in the west. I plan on giving a full report once I've had a chance to read it.
Since the word "orient" is specifically a cardinal direction in Latin, it's a little hard to suggest that the term is offensive without it being used as an adjunct modification to cultural or ethnic entities. The eastern trade route (the silk road as it were) is heavily romanticized, and that romantic ideal can be offensive in the sense that it the process of idealizing the passage to the east often came at the expense of occlusion outside of the very limited Eurocentric perspective. However, with the advent of globalism, this romantic ideal is one that's often adopted by the same people it formerly romanticized, as evident by the strong push by Chinese collectors paying premiums for Imerperial relics that were originally intended for export to the West. Really, since the opening of China to the West in the '70s, the concept of orientalism has changed to include the repatriation of this image.