This article may be hitting you at a very Chinese time in your life.
At least if you’ve spent enough time on social media lately, the “China Max Thing” phenomenon has taken over your feeds with videos of people drinking boiling water, shuffling around the house in slippers, and wearing viral Adidas jackets that resemble historical Chinese fashion.
These things, content creators joke, help you “become Chinese” and reflect the West’s growing interest in Chinese culture and aesthetics.
@notrvj
Honestly, this helped my morning routine so much #chinese #chinesetiktok #Morningroutine
♬ Original song – Alex
“Morning routine as the new Chinese villain,” one TikTok creator captioned a video of him performing a series of traditional Chinese gymnastics. Another video, which has been viewed more than 2.4 million times as of late February, shows the author boiling apples to make fruit tea, an ancient Chinese elixir for gut health.
We have seen this play out before as Asia steadily accumulates the world’s cultural capital. K-drama, K-pop, and K-beauty have become beloved around the world, and record numbers of tourists are flocking to Japan, brimming with its pristine streets and high-speed trains.
It looks like it’s China’s turn this time.
“For a long time, there has been an argument that China doesn’t have as much soft power over South Korea or Japan,” said Tianyu Huang, a doctoral student in Harvard’s Department of History of Science.
“We’ve seen things change quite a bit in recent months. Chinese video games, Chinese movies, even something as small as Love Bus are really reshaping China’s cultural imagination in the United States and even in the Western world.”
However, this feels a little different from previous waves of Asian culture. First, South Korea and Japan are both democracies and staunch allies of the United States, while China is an authoritarian state and the United States’ main rival.
This trend also signals a change in the American public’s mood.
Just a few years ago, the COVID-19 pandemic led to a spike in deadly anti-Asian hate crimes. US President Donald Trump has repeatedly used racist language, calling the coronavirus “kung flu.” Trade wars and other tensions have led to widespread Sinophobia.
Against this backdrop, for many Gen Z Americans, accepting to “become Chinese” may seem like a 180-degree turn.
But experts say the trend reveals deeper undercurrents, including political turmoil, gun violence, immigration crackdowns and persistent racial tensions, as well as many Americans’ dissatisfaction with living at home. All of this has dulled America’s façade and fueled the curiosity of young Americans to know what life is like on the other side.
It’s also a matter of simple exposure, Fang noted. Chinese products have long been widely used around the world, but more Americans are now realizing the Chinese government’s advantages in many fields, especially in the competitive world of technology.
And what they’re seeing is redefining their image of cool.
This is not the first time China has drawn on the intrigues of the West. As China began to open up to the world in the 2000s and early 2010s, more foreigners began learning Chinese, and travel to and immigration from China skyrocketed.
Much of the enthusiasm for partnering with the Asian giant is due to economic reasons, Huang said.
But over the past decade, “China has become more self-sufficient and, especially during the coronavirus pandemic, much more inward-looking than before,” he said.
Relations with the United States have also deteriorated dramatically, as China has become increasingly authoritarian under leader Xi Jinping, rather than the more democratic and liberal one Western leaders had hoped for.
But now people seem to be drawn to China not just for the money, but for the cool factor.
This may be partly fueled by China’s post-COVID-19 economic reopening, including loosening visa policies and boosting tourism, as well as a mass migration of social media users to China’s Xiaohongshu (also known as Red Note) platform after the US government threatened to ban TikTok.
The influx of Americans into Xiaohongshu has allowed two vastly different people who normally exist in completely separate online spaces to connect directly like never before.
And it’s no coincidence that this trend comes amid a widespread decline in America’s global image. Although it remains a globally dominant cultural force, recent geopolitics and domestic turmoil have caused people around the world to change their views on this superpower.
Look at how immigration crackdowns have forced many international students to go elsewhere to study. Cuts in research budgets have led top scientists to study in China instead. Canadians angry over the trade war are boycotting American products. Or how Americans themselves choose to be deported.
This growing disillusionment can be seen in the type of Chinese content that young Americans are drawn to.
For example, videos showing the dizzying skylines of large Chinese cities such as Chongqing and Shanghai have gone viral as depicting a futuristic vision of city life, filled with seemingly clean streets and low-level violent crime.
Clips of neon-lit skyscrapers, drone shows, and amazing transportation systems dominate social media algorithms. Other popular videos focus on China’s progress in electric vehicles and adoption of green energy.
In many ways, the romanticism of China’s progress is an oversimplification. For example, while housing costs in China are lower than in the United States, average wages are also much lower, which is one of the many practical challenges of life in China. But despite these problems, the viral video presents a fascinating contrast with America’s aging infrastructure and high cost of living.
Current trends “say more about how Americans feel about America than they do about how Americans feel about China,” Huang said.
Given the long history of Sinophobia and geopolitical tensions in the United States, it is difficult to say how long “China Max Thin” will last and whether it is a sign of an increasingly Sinicized future.
Beijing has spent years cultivating soft and hard power in parts of Africa, Latin America, Southeast Asia, and the Pacific Islands. While Chinese EVs and Huawei or Xiaomi smartphones are common in certain countries, they are less common in the United States due to policy restrictions and import regulations.
“Many Americans are gradually realizing that these are things that China has been producing, and they are very good,” Huang said. “These things weren’t allowed in the U.S., so there are delays.”
Even some of America’s closest traditional allies are inching closer to China in the face of President Trump’s erratic foreign policy. France’s Emmanuel Macron, Britain’s Keir Starmer, Finland’s Petteri Olpo and Canada’s Mark Carney have all visited Beijing in recent months and been entertained by Xi.
Internet culture changes quickly, and viral memes die quickly. For most users, “Chinamaxxing” was not meant to be very serious and was meant to be used as irony or a joke.
The trend has also come under criticism, with some in the Chinese diaspora denouncing it as cultural appropriation and insensitivity.
But for a fleeting moment, trends like this can create an unexpected digital bridge between two cultures often divided by politics and leadership decisions.
“Personally, I grew up, or came of age, in the last 10 years when people in the United States and China were interested in what each other had to say and what each other had to offer to the world,” Fan said.
“I’d like to see some of that come back in this day and age.”
