The Rise of 'Chinamaxxing': How Western Youth Are Embracing the Chinese Dream While the CCP Fails to Sell It
TikTok refugees and influencers claim China is superior to the West
Western observers are watching a curious cultural shift known as 'Chinamaxxing', where Anglophone teens extol the benefits of becoming Chinese. This trend is less a triumph of Communist Party soft power than a symptom of Western decline. The phenomenon began with a simple act of defiance against an American TikTok ban. The result was a flood of self-styled 'TikTok refugees' who migrated to the Chinese lifestyle app Xiaohongshu, or RedNote, which topped the Apple App Store in the United States. These users were captivated by the China they found and began comparing it favorably to American society. Within months, the American streamer IShowSpeed went viral with an unscripted journey through the country, opening the eyes of many Westerners to the sights and strangeness of China.
Beijing was taken aback. The 'Chinamaxxing' movement is organic, and the Party is nervous about anything it cannot control. Currently, Beijing is content to accept the good press. This year, the government extended visa-free entry to British visitors staying up to 30 days. However, few of these visitors will stray far from the glittering lights of the eastern seaboard or the Chongqing megalopolis. They will miss the empty apartment complexes that litter the country and the poverty ravaging the hinterland. Instead, they will broadcast smiling images of a rich and quirky China to a credulous home audience. The change began in early 2025 when the threat of the TikTok ban drove hundreds of thousands of users to Xiaohongshu.
One end of the 'Chinamaxxing' spectrum focuses on squatting and chopsticks, while the other is ideological. The sights of Chongqing could have been tailor-made for the 2020s world of short-form content. The city features a monorail that bores through an apartment building and a crystal skybridge 250 meters in the air. The soaring and plunging perspectives warp reality. Dazzled by these futuristic features, 'Chinamaxxers' progress to the conclusion that 'China is governed better than we are.' Some even conclude that China proves there is an alternative to Western neoliberalism and hypercapitalism. They mimic old Sinic traditions like drinking hot water and practicing tai chi while marveling at drone light shows and high-speed rail.
This shift is part of a broader global trend documented by the Pew Research Center. The organization surveyed more than 45,000 people in 37 countries earlier this year. The data shows a median of 51% have a favorable view of China, while 39% hold an unfavorable view. Views of China are at or near historic highs in Turkey, Spain, Malaysia, Peru, Italy, Colombia, Greece, Mexico, Indonesia, Nigeria, Hungary, Singapore, and Sri Lanka. Favorability is strongest in the Global South, where people engage daily with Chinese apps, cars, phones, and fast food. Their social media feeds are filled with Chinese fashion, dramas, and tech. China is visible and tangible, often linked to practical necessity. However, this success has little to do with the Communist Party, which spent the past decade failing in its soft power strategy.
Top-down efforts to follow President Xi's mandate to 'tell China's story well' were clumsy, coercive, and cackhanded. State media was unconvincing, and Wolf Warrior rhetoric backfired. Confucius Institutes closed across the West, and the Belt and Road lost its luster. China's story simply did not sell overseas. The overall effect was a simpering mask with a rictus grin, slipping at the slightest provocation to reveal a face distorted with rage. In contrast, private entrepreneurs are succeeding where the state failed. China's chronic lack of domestic consumption drove firms to seek new markets abroad. Facing tariffs and data-security scrutiny in the West, they expanded throughout the Global South.
There, the relentless intensity of competition led to creative adaptations. For example, Transsion built cheap phones kitted out with batteries suited to the erratic electricity grids in Uganda and Nigeria. The camera software flatters darker complexions. Streaming platforms DramaBox and ShortMax boosted their audiences in Malaysia and Indonesia by putting local actors in their microdramas and avoiding romantic scenes that offend Muslim-majority cultures. Among richer countries, the swing in Beijing's favor is stranger. Sometimes the 'Chinamaxxing' message is preached by minor celebrities with their own YouTube channels, almost certainly in the employ of the Chinese Communist Party's Propaganda Department. God only knows what these figures believe in the privacy of their own minds, or what honeytrap twists and blackmail turns might have brought them to this point.
More concerning is the cohort of ordinary youth genuinely sold on the propaganda. These are people with a slippery grasp on reality. One can imagine sitting in a Sheffield bar watching a local explain with great earnestness to a visibly bored Chinese woman that Britain has a sham democracy while China has 'true democracy.' The Twitch streamer Hasan Piker embodies this perspective. He visited Tiananmen Square in Beijing in November 2025 wearing a viral yellow Adidas 'New Chinese Style' jacket. His visit drew criticism because he called China a 'normal country,' dismissed Western accounts as rumors and lies, and said he felt no patriotism for America. The West's new infatuation with China is a complex mix of visual seduction and political disillusionment.
First reported by r/geopolitics.
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