Why is everyone suddenly in a “very Chinese time” in their lives?

In case you are I didn’t get the memo, everyone is feeling Chinese these days. Across social media, people are declaring, “You met me at a very Chinese time in my life,” while performing stereotypical Chinese activities like eating dim sum or wearing a Chinese Adidas jacket that has gone viral. The trend has exploded so much in recent weeks that celebrities like comedian Jimmy O Yang and influencer Hassan Baker have joined in. It has now evolved into variations such as “Chinamaxxing” (acting increasingly Chinese) and “You’ll be Chinese tomorrow” (a kind of affirmation or blessing).

It’s hard to pinpoint the zeitgeist, but here at WIRED, chronically online folks like us have noticed a distinct shift when it comes to China over the past year. Despite all the tariffs, export controls, and anti-China rhetoric, many people in the United States, especially younger generations, have fallen in love with Chinese technology, Chinese brands, and Chinese cities, and are generally consuming more Chinese-made products than ever before. In a sense, the only logical thing left is to become Chinese in the literal sense of the word.

“It occurred to me that a lot of you haven’t come to terms with your newfound Chinese identity,” influencer Zhao Pan joked in a TikTok video with more than 340,000 likes. “Let me just ask you this: Don’t you browse this Chinese app, maybe on a Chinese-made phone, and wear clothes made in China, and collect dolls that come from China?”

Everything is China

As is often the case with Western narratives about China, these memes aren’t really meant to paint an accurate picture of life in the country. Instead, they serve as a projection of “all the undesirable aspects of American life — or the decline of the American dream,” says Tianyu Fang, a doctoral researcher at Harvard University who studies science and technology in China.

As America’s infrastructure collapses and once unimaginable forms of state violence become normalized, China is beginning to look good by contrast. “When people say it’s the Chinese century, part of it is this cynical defeat,” Fang says.

As the Trump administration remade the US government in its image and shattered old democratic norms, people began to yearn for an alternative model, and they found a very good one in China. With its stunning skyline and abundant high-speed trains, the country serves as a symbol of the earnest and pressing desire among many Americans for something very different from their reality.

Critics often point to China’s massive investments in clean energy to highlight the failures of America’s climate policy, or point to urban infrastructure development to denounce the US housing shortage. These narratives tend to emphasize China’s strengths while marginalizing the uglier aspects of its development – ​​but this selectivity is the point. China is not used as a real place so much as an abstraction, or a way to expose America’s flaws. As writer Minh Tran noted in a recent article on Substack, “In the twilight of American empire, our Orientalism is no longer a transcendent Orientalism, but an aspirational Orientalism.”

One of the reasons China is on everyone’s mind is that it has become absolutely inevitable. No matter where you live in the world, you are likely to be surrounded by things made in China. Here at WIRED, we’ve documented it exhaustively: Your phone, laptop, or robot vacuum is made in China; Your favorite AI joke is made in China; Labobo, the world’s most sought-after toy, is made in China; The solar panels that power the Global South are made in China; The world’s best-selling electric car brand, which officially overtook Tesla last year, is made in China. Even the most talked about open source AI models are from China. All of these examples are why we named this newsletter made in china.