Just in case I didn’t get the memo, everyone feels very Chinese these days. On social media, people announce that “You met me during a very Chinese period of my life” while performing stereotypically coded Chinese activities such as eating dim sum or wearing a viral Chinese Adidas jacket. In recent weeks, this trend has intensified so much that stars have taken a liking to the comedian Jimmy O Yang and even the influential Hasan Piker he got in on this. It has now evolved into varieties such as “Chinamaxxing” (acting more and more Chinese) and “tomorrow you will turn into a Chinese” (a type of affirmation or blessing).
It’s hard to quantify the zeitgeist, but at WIRED, chronic internet users like us have noticed a marked shift in sentiment in China over the past year. Despite all the tariffs, export controls, and anti-Chinese rhetoric, many people in the United States, especially younger generations, have fallen in love with Chinese technology, Chinese brands, Chinese cities, and are generally consuming more Chinese products than ever before. In a sense, the only logical thing left was to literally become Chinese.
“It occurred to me that many of you haven’t come to terms with your newfound Chinese identity,” joked influencer Chao Ban. Video from TikTok which has accumulated over 340,000 likes. “Let me ask you: aren’t you browsing this Chinese app, probably on a phone made in China, wearing clothes made in China, and collecting dolls that come from China?”
Everything is China
As is often the case with Western narratives about China, these memes are not intended to paint an accurate picture of life in the country. Instead, they function as a projection of “all the undesirable aspects of American life or the failure of the American dream,” says Tianyu Fang, a doctoral student at Harvard who studies science and technology in China.
As America’s infrastructure crumbles and once unimaginable forms of state violence normalize, China is starting to look pretty good in comparison. “When people say it’s China’s century, it’s partly because of ironic failure,” Fang says.
As the Trump administration reshaped the U.S. government in its own image and shattered long-established democratic norms, people began to long for an alternative role model, and they found quite a good one in China. With its inspiring skyline and abundant high-speed trains, the country is a symbol of the serious and urgent desire of many Americans for something completely different from their own reality.
Critics often point to China’s massive investments in clean energy to highlight the failures of U.S. climate policy, or point to urban infrastructure development to shame the U.S. housing shortage. These narratives tend to highlight China’s strengths while sidelining the uglier aspects of its development – but that’s what selectivity is all about. China is used not so much as a real place but as an abstraction, a way to expose America’s own shortcomings. As writer Minh Tran noticed in a recent Substack post: “In the twilight of the American empire, our Orientalism is not a patronizing Orientalism, but an aspirational one.”
One of the reasons everyone thinks about China is that it has become completely inevitable. No matter where in the world you live, you’re likely to be surrounded by things made in China. At WIRED, we document it in detail: Your phone, laptop or robotic vacuum cleaner is made in China; your favorite joke about artificial intelligence was made in China; Labubu, the most desirable toy in the world, is made in China; solar panels powering the Global South are made in China; the world’s best-selling electric vehicle brand, which officially overtook Tesla last year, is manufactured in China. Even the most talked about open source AI model comes from China. All of these examples are the reason for the name of this newsletter Made in China.