Taylor Lorenz’s Power User - Why Everyone Is Becoming Chinese Online w/ Caroline Kwan

Episode Date: January 28, 2026

China is winning the culture war: From "galvanized square steel" to drinking hot water, why is the entire internet suddenly looking more Chinese?Support my independent journalism:🙏 Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/cw/taylorlorenz  🗞️ Substack: https://www.usermag.co  Over the past year, a massive cultural shift has taken place. From China-maxxing memes to TikTok migrations, Chinese tech, culture, and lifestyle have become aspirational in a way no one could have predicted a decade ago. Twitch streamer and pop culture commentator Caroline Kwan joins me to break down how and why the internet became Chinese. We discuss what these memes actually mean, and why US politicians are panicking. We talk about the TikTok ban, RedNote, Chinese tech dominance, cultural soft power, high speed rail, American decline, surveillance hypocrisy, and why Gen Z no longer believes what they were told.We also talk about why American propaganda on China is collapsing in real time, and what that says about the future of politics, culture, and power in the 21st century.Follow me:Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/taylorlorenz  Instagram (alt): https://www.instagram.com/taylorlorenz3.0  TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@taylorlorenz  Topics Covered:"China Maxxing" and "You met me at a very Chinese time" memes.Why Gen Z is moving to Red Note (Xiaohongshu) after the TikTok ban.The contrast between US infrastructure (crumbling) and China (high-speed rail).The truth about the "Made in China" stigma vs. modern quality.Why US anti-China propaganda is backfiring.

Yet you want to tell me that the major issue of governmental repression is over in China. Do you not want to take a look at what's happening in the United States of America? Lately, everything on the internet is looking a bit more Chinese. Right as U.S. politicians are warning about China as America's greatest threat, millions of young people in the U.S. are cheerfully declaring that they are becoming Chinese. They're embracing Chinese habits, foods, and customs like drinking hot water, taking off their shoes before entering the house and telling others, you met me at a very Chinese time in my life.

But what's actually driving this trend and how did it really emerge? There have been a bunch of videos breaking it down, but to dive deeper into the phenomenon, I called up my friend Caroline Kwan, a phenomenal pop culture Twitch streamer. Today, we're talking about how the entire internet became Chinese and what the memes reveal about the state of American politics, culture, tech, and life in the 21st century.

Caroline, welcome. Hi. Thank you so much for being here. I have to tell you, before we get started, I texted Hassan initially asking him who should come on this stream. And he finally responded this morning and said, I would love to help. I said, I'm sorry, I already have Caroline coming on. He said, I can't believe you're looking for other people. I'm the most Chinese. I knew he was going to say something along those lines because the entire two weeks in China, this man kept telling me that he was more Chinese. than I, which since we're having a conversation about the China Maxing, you met me at a very Chinese time of my life style of memes, sure. I'll give it to him because I didn't even know what those memes were. I didn't even know why all of the men I was with in China kept saying some variation of this. I was like, what is this? Where is this coming from? I feel like it just came in the past few months. I know he said you're a fraud. He's the real white Chinese. I started to hear. at like the end of last year. But I think it started before that. I feel like China's influence has been growing for a while. I mean, to start off, I kind of want to talk about like how China was viewed before this kind of like renaissance because at least when I was growing up, China always seemed like this really foreign place.

Like we didn't know people from China. I mean, most Americans' exposure to China of Chinese culture was through Chinese food, I guess. But it was always sort of not aspirational. No. I mean, thanks to decades. of anti-China propaganda in this country and painting China and therefore Chinese people as this scary, mysterious foreign enemy.

A lot of people ironically would enjoy Chinese food but hold really negative sentiments towards actual Chinese people. Like the people who were making that food for them, they did not have any respect for nor have any appreciation, for, but they sure is shit. Love their orange chicken. I feel like for those of us that are like millennials or were like in high school, like in the 2000s, like the aughts and stuff still, like, right when kind of there was a lot of Chinese labor and I think like iPhones were made in China. And that's like one of the first times. I remember like hearing about it. And you would just hear

about like factories. And I always had this belief that like or this impression rather that like everyone in China had to work that like nine nine six lifestyle or whatever like, you know, they would wake up and go to bed and work. And, you know, I was always like, gosh, thank God, I live in America. You know, I don't have to work myself to the bone like they're doing over in, you know, the Chinese factories. Well, it was this concept of in America, we have freedom and we are free and everything is wonderful and amazing here. And in China, they're all slaves. They're all miserable. They don't have any joy, any leisure time in their lives. There's no similarities between Chinese people and American people.

And, man, how great is it that we get to live in America? and these poor Chinese suffering in China. I also think just as the tech industry throughout the 2010s kind of emerged and we saw this very like American dominance in the tech world like globally outside of China, there was this idea of like we are as Americans like the dominant culture.

Like every country has Facebook now. This is their primary like vehicle to the internet and China was sequestered by like the great firewall. And I mean even when musically originally started, everyone was like it's kind of a clone of this Chinese app but it was always like the Chinese apps were always like considered inferior. Or they'd be like, oh, yeah, they have their version of Uber, but like we, the rest of the world, get like actual Uber.

Yeah, I think it was this idea, too, that Chinese people had to use these apps because of governmental control, you know, whereas we all get these global social media platforms and we have the freedom of using them however we want. The reason for these Chinese specific apps is because of that extreme element of like coercion and control that I think was the attitude towards why there was kind of the separate internet and social media platforms for the Chinese versus everybody else. I think like you start to see these cracks emerge when the pandemic hits. Obviously there was so

much anti-Chinese hate that year because of COVID and this idea that like, oh, you know, China is responsible for COVID and they're forcing everyone into lockdown, how terrible it is, that they were saving people's lives, like, at what cost or whatever. But that was also the year that Trump tried to ban TikTok, claiming that it was this, like, Chinese spyware and stuff. And I feel like that's like, especially from the people that I talk to, like, in the tech world, when people started to be like, wait, a minute. We actually use a lot of Chinese apps.

And I don't think there's spyware. And actually, it's like a pretty good app. Like, why are these other companies that are struggling to compete with it so hard actually looking to ban it, you know, if American tech is so good? Also, how funny is it that Donald Trump, was the one who said, I'm going to ban TikTok, and then later is praised for saving TikTok when the entire time the plan was to just put it into the hands of Trump allies

to have American MAGA billionaires be in control of the biggest social media platform that young people use. Exactly. And let's be clear, the Democrats knew that, and the Democrats wanted to do it, and they wanted to do it because of Israel. Like, it's so crazy. When TikTok did go down for the 12 hours or 14 hours that it did, A lot of people downloaded Red Note in protest, which for a while was open and people could like see content from actual Chinese people on there. And I don't know if you remember, but like some of the most popular videos that came out of there were Chinese people talking about their lives and basically expressing pity for Americans.

I think it was kind of the opposite of how Americans had looked at Chinese people and gone, wow, it must really be, it must really suck to live there. And then when Red Notes popping off, TikTok's down, it was like this collective move over to Red Note, but also there were serious sentiments around TikTok potentially going down, but also it kind of in and of itself felt like this, I don't know, fun time, this camaraderie with TikTok users where it was like, fuck the old people in Congress,

what's happening, what's popping, where's the party? It's like when a party gets shut down and people were like, okay, where do we go next? That was kind of the vibe that I got. And so Red Note then starts popping off. People are talking about it. They're having just like a really fun time, almost making their way over to this other party

where the people who have been there were like, welcome. You know, it's actually really fun. And we feel bad for you guys. And, you know, sorry your party got shut down, but we're having a great time over here. Yeah. I think people also just started to realize that like Chinese tech is pretty good and fun.

And the same thing along with the TikTok ban, people started to flood to Lemon 8, which is another app run by Bite Dance, the Chinese company. And also people were really mourning the loss of Capcut. Capcut is undeniably the best, like, mobile video editing tool. And that went down as well with the original TikTok ban. And I think people were like, wait a minute, why can't we have like basic good things? And you started to see this also around the conversation with electric cars, too, where you started to see these videos on Instagram Reels or else. of people having like cheap housing, either cheap mobile housing, the whole galvanized square steel like meme of like cheap affordable housing being built. And then these cars that like, yeah, could self

park themselves and do all this amazing stuff. And I think Americans started to like be like, wait a minute. Why don't we have these here? Yeah, I think there was definitely this thing where a lot of people looked at tech that they were seeing in China and going, I thought that was just in the movies. Like that was something that I thought was fictionalized and that, you know, maybe one day we'll get there. You're telling me that this is something that's already been popularized over in China. So it was like people were living out Blade Runner in seeing this tech that's available and that's not super rare necessarily and going, what? This exists already. This is sick.

Like that was a lot of, I think, the attitude was look at how cool this is. So into all of this, like the TikTok ban was January 2025. There seems to be more and more conversation online after that. Some people still continue to use Red Note. And just a lot more people, I think, started to pay attention to Chinese tech and Chinese culture. In March, the spring that year, I show speed, one of the most famous Twitch streamers in the world, goes to China as part of his world tour. And I feel like this was really like the before and after moment for like Chinese culture where like I think it just broke through in this insane way online where you're. you couldn't escape it and everyone started to look at his videos and be like, wait a minute.

Like, that's China. Like, that seems like you're saying, some futuristic like paradise from like blade, like some movie that, you know, that we didn't even know that they had. Like, what are these drone shows that we're seeing? Like, what is this like food delivery system that we don't have? Like, it just looks incredible. And I think too, speed went over there and the government obviously welcomed him with open arms and helped facilitate a lot of the things that he did on stream.

but it's not as if he was like dressed as Mao Zedong reciting from the little red book, like doing clear political propaganda in how I think a lot of Americans maybe would have thought, oh, if you go over there, if you're working with the government, this is what it's going to sound and look like.

Instead, it was just like, look at all of these amazing things, look at these amazing cities, these skylines, this technology, and look at how a lot of young Chinese people are just like a lot of young American people, the things that they're interested in, the attitudes that they have.

So it may be a totally different country with a different culture, but I think it also showed how it's not so different. These are not people who are these foreign alien beings, nothing in common with anyone in America whatsoever. So that was, I think, a really important aspect of speed streams over there is kind of ripping.

the veil off of what American media has for decades now propagandized. And it was just as simple as like showing the cities and the culture over there on stream. People seem so happy. Like, it just seemed like awesome. Like, people were excited. And I feel like this is also when you start to see a lot of Chinese American content creators come on and start talking about China and be like, yeah, this is how it is. It's actually not this like evil, dark. place and you start to see a lot more people talking about it, starting talking about China maxing. When did you go on your trip to China? So we went in November. We were there for two weeks and we got the Adidas Chinese track suits. We were doing the squat, you know, the old uncle squat,

smoking skinny cigarettes, the drinking hot water. Those are a lot of cultural things that pop up in these memes when someone says I'm China maxing or you met me at a very Chinese some of my life. They might be squatting on the ground drinking a cup of hot water. I think the difference too is when I was younger, being culturally Chinese was not cool at all. And I think other East Asian countries like South Korea, like Japan kind of got there before China did as far as Americans embracing aspects of those cultures. Anime, for instance, Korean skin care, those things are so normalized now and really popularized. And I think China is now having its massive cultural moment in that way, where it's more than just, oh, I like Chinese food. It's all these different

aspects of Chinese culture that there seems to be an actual appreciation of. You know, it's not like a weird appropriation kind of mockery thing. It's generally, oh, this is something that I actually want to adopt into my own lifestyle. Like, oh, the Chinese got it right. Yeah. It seems like it is truly from a place of like appreciation. There's the viral post by this woman, Sherry Zhu, and I might be mispronouncing her name, a 22 year old in New Jersey who has family roots in China. She decided to tell everybody in December, regardless of their race or ethnicity that they were Chinese. I feel like she got that was this like viral post that was like you are Chinese. And I feel like, you know, when you start to see these videos, like it is a lot of people being like, wait a minute, this is great.

Like I like having a hot water in the morning or I like doing my like. what is it called Tai Chi or whatever in the park, you know, like there's actually a lot that people can adopt from this culture that is good and that is not like, yeah, what America has like kind of painted it as. Yeah, I mean, I even found myself when I was in China being excited to really participate in Chinese cultural things, kind of really embracing my own Chinese ethnicity in a way that just felt so different from when I was a kid. And I kept looking around and going, this is crazy. This is really crazy to see when I was a little kid.

I never could have imagined that being Chinese would be cool, like that this would be a trend on the internet that was not intending to mock China or Chinese people, which was kind of the status quo when I was younger. And now it's flipped. Now it's the opposite of that, which has been really great to witness and also just kind of unbelievable. but I also get it. I get how we've reached this point. I get how we've gotten to this point now. It's just still from my personal perspective. Never thought that I would be cool for being Chinese. If you're watching this video and you like my work, please support me on Patreon via the link below or buy a paid subscription to my tech and online culture newsletter at usermag.com. That's usermag.com. I don't have any long-term brand partnerships and a lot of my content is effectively demonetized.

I've lost major brand deals for speaking out on certain issues and for challenging power. As you can imagine, advertisers are not exactly eager to work with somebody who covers a lot of the topics that I cover and talks about the things that I talk about. These videos I make are entirely funded by you and I can't continue to make them without your support. So if you get any value out of the videos that I create and you want me to be able to create more, please support me on Patreon or Substack via the links below. On Patreon, I do bonus episodes, monthly Q&A live streams, and post frequent updates about my work. My substack newsletter gives you a bi-weekly roundup of everything that I'm seeing and reading

and paying attention to online. You can also get my newsletter on Patreon. Once again, the links to everything are below in the description. Every dollar of your support makes such a difference. You mentioned the Edita's track suit and I, you know, I think of also just the rise of like Chinese fashion and street style, which has also become increasingly popular on like short form video apps and just this like aspirational quality to China's sort of fashion and goods. It's such a departure from I feel like maybe the previous view of China where it was always like, oh, this is where you get like cheap crap made, right? Like this is where you buy like the low quality stuff.

And certainly like so much of that stuff is all over TikTok shop. But I feel like we see a lot of like craftsmen on TikTok shop as well now where we're seeing these like local like artisans creating these like intricately like design ceramic bowls or interesting things where like people are like, wait, a minute, there's like real artistry here. And this isn't just all like cheap plastic TEMU stuff, which I think also the rise of TEMU and shopping apps like has also made America feel more comfortable with like China. But it's it's yeah, it's just like I think people also view China as a place for like high quality goods as well now. I think is this attitude changing of made in China

versus created in China and the made in China kind of hercaning to this image of as you said, cheap plastic crap that's just being generated to the millions in these factories versus created in China, which I think not only refers to high-quality artisan goods, but also kind of culturally the soft power that China is wielding now in video games, in films. They had this film Nijah 2. It's the sequel. It is now the highest grossing animated film ever. Like globally, it has grossed over.

$2 billion, which makes it the highest grossing animated film ever worldwide, which is really huge for China's cultural soft power and also the Labubu, right? The Labubu was a massive craze last year. There was one guy who I saw this Chinese creator and he was explaining, goes, you're already Chinese, the little doll that you're holding, the dim sum that you're, you know, planning to go to with your friends. He was just listing all these examples of things that are created in China that are belonging to Chinese culture and how many people are already daily participating in these, you know, in using these products and engaging in these lifestyles. And he's like, you're already Chinese. You just don't know it.

Well, I think of also just like the amount of manufacturers that came on TikTok, like even the Guantau, I'm going to mispronounce it, the glycine. About a year ago, Dong Gua Jin Long. I know I'm butchering that. this glycine manufacturer started advertising on tic-tok and people were just like what is this why like what's glycine what is this and then they sort of started to lean into it like it just became this like meme and then you started to see all these other manufacturers come on ticot or come on instagram and say like here's how we make our products or we're actually making the products in your house you know trying to like demystify the manufacturing process a little bit where people started to

i think of that other viral video of like the person being like hey all these like nice hand-backed or luxury goods or leather goods that you think are all made in Italy. They're actually mostly assembled in China. And they just go for like the final stitches in Italy and you guys buy it. But like, as you said, it's like so much of what we already adopt and love and maybe think of as even like European culture is actually just made in China or this is so funny. There's a term for fans of the product glycine girlies. The children yearn for the glycine.

This article is a random Chinese company selling food grade glycine is Gen Z's newest TikTok obsession. But you have to go back and watch the videos. They're really funny. It kind of became this blueprint, I feel like for a lot of other manufacturers, like to hop on. I also think of this guy, Jason, who became kind of a micro celebrity for the E Tong capsule homes. Are you familiar with those? Girl, you have a deeper knowledge of what.

I am Chinese. You are. I am the true white Chinese time. Yes. Take that Hassan Piker. I think I just engaged with a lot of weird stuff all over my like algorithms. But I think it's just like, there's this blurring because of e-commerce and because of like, as you said, also just the entertainment

markets and like the globalization of all of this of like commerce generally, there's just more and more kind of blurring of like cultures. And I think we're getting a lot more stuff. Whereas previously we were sort of cut off from that. It was like everything's manufactured abroad, but we only sort of see the Americanized versions of it. Well, when you first asked me to do this and I told you, I was like, girl, I'm usually the last to understand a meme on the internet. I'm usually usually the last to find out. But I can't tell you how funny it was. I kept hearing people say this as I was in China too. And so finally I just looked it up, which is a thing that you can do if you don't know something. And I didn't realize like how big it was on the internet that there were

so many of these posts that it was a major trend. So that was the element that surprised me, not so much kind of just understanding how political attitudes are changing, especially with younger generations towards, you know, Israel, towards China, just away from how American media has tried to shape and politics has tried to shape the narrative. But it was still something I just didn't know how big it was on the internet. But I think, I think there's a lot of that that's been kind of these major examples of the mythology crumbling. Another thing I thought about was MSG. Like, I remember for years, MSG, like the racist myths fueling, the anti-MSG attitudes in America and how that has changed a lot as well.

Like older generations would believe that, you know, believe that MSG would kill you, that it was this really horrible unsafe thing. And of course, it's because it's Chinese, right? It comes, the Chinese use it. And now that a lot of that has gone away. I also just think of like people's concepts of like health and wellness and like what's actually good for us.

what's actually bad for us. Like I think we're recognizing that actually a lot of the American diet is really toxic. A lot of Chinese food is actually quite healthy in certain ways. And also I think of just the wellness trend and the just as, especially since COVID started, like the decline of American health care, you're seeing a lot more people turn to like Eastern medicine or look at Chinese medicine and like say like, wait a minute. They were on to some stuff here. Like maybe our broken, you know, for profit American health care system is bad and Chinese medicine offers us a lot. Yeah, I think it's people who are discovering different ways of life.

And through that discovery, they're like, oh, maybe my way or what I've been told is the right way is not that. And maybe there's a lot to be gained here from opening myself up to foods and lifestyles and just all things that make up a different culture than my own. And I can learn from this. I can adapt, you know, I can adapt certain things into my lifestyle. doesn't mean that I have to completely change everything. But I think that's a lot of what's happening.

You mentioned Israel earlier. And I feel like, you know, especially in the past couple years, a lot of people in America have realized, like, basically how imperialist and evil America is and like the bad stuff that we do around the world and the like regime changes we, you know, enact. And I have started to kind of just like sour on US imperialism generally.

And I feel like this is also turned them towards China, where they look at a country like China and they're like, wait a minute, Why are we sending $50 billion to Israel when we don't have basic infrastructure? China has high speed rail. I don't know if you've seen that. There was that viral, like, map of America versus China and the high speed rail system over the past 10 years.

It seems like part of this like pro-China sentiment is also just driven by like the ineptitude of the U.S. government and its obsession with imperialism. I think there's absolutely a correlation between America losing its strength on the world stage. And you know, it's interesting because in particular the high. high-speed rail. That's something that comes up all the time. And I think that's a really strong symbol of crumbling infrastructure versus strengthened infrastructure and this concept of, oh, you can travel via train and it's high speed, it's nice, it's inexpensive all throughout the country. And that's something that Americans are going, we can have that, but why don't we have that?

So there's a lot of this like not just kind of Americans believing what their own country has lost, but also what their country never had. And that not being due to any actual inability from like a structural standpoint, but from our political system, from lobbying, from these massive, you know, from the airline companies blocking trains, blocking this type of infrastructure being built because they don't want it to impede on their business. They don't want the competition. It's capitalism.

It's capitalism. And I think the train, kind of the symbol of that and how often that is brought up when somebody is comparing the Chinese communist government to the American democratic capitalist government and going trains. Why don't we have them? We should have them. China has them. You're telling me that things are so bad over there, that they're so repressed that, you know, this is not the way of doing things. And yet trains. People keep coming back to them.

Yeah, it's like everything we were told was impossible and like would make a country not thrive like healthcare, like walkable cities or like, yeah, trains, easy public access to things. Like we were always told like, no, enacting that would make society crumble. Like there's no way to thrive. And then you see China, a global superpower that seems to have like people are thriving there and people seem happy and they have all of these things that we were told weren't possible.

Like yeah, it's I think people kind of like look at it like, hmm, okay, the government's lying to us. I think another example of this is there is currently so much state-sanctioned violence that is happening in America that is happening. If you have eyes, you can see it. You know, that video of Renee Good being murdered was seen by millions of people. It's been a major topic of conversation. And then, of course, just the ensuing activities of ICE. And I think something that's also falling apart at the seams is this idea that Chinese people are repressed by their government.

versus in America were not. And one instance, I can think of that really kind of shows this difference is when we were in China, we went to see the flag raising ceremony in Beijing. We went to Tiananmen Square. And as we were waiting to get in, Marsh had pulled out his phone and it was like a meme of Hassan with his head superimposed on Mao Zedong's body. It was a very silly meme. But a security guard saw it from far away.

And I think what he thought is that we were a group of obnoxious Western creators who were there to cause issues. So he came over and was like, what is that? And then it was fine. It was like a five-minute thing. He realized like, oh, we're not here causing any trouble. So moved on. And of course, that was reported on as like this major international incident, Hassan Piker and friends detained by the CCP. Just ridiculous.

And then you compare that, though, to how many videos have we seen of journalists reporting on, protests against ice and being pepper sprayed, beaten, arrested by these federal agents. And yet you want to tell me that the major issue of governmental repression and people not having any freedoms is over in China. Do you not want to take a look at what's happening in the United States of America? I mean, yeah. And I think we've just also just witnessed like the actual brutality of our government so much, which we had, you know, it's always.

been there, but I think the internet has allowed us to see so much of it. And ironically, as because the internet has been this like sort of liberatory force, and we always had this very open internet, in contrast to China, which has a much more sort of controlled internet, now that people are seeing all this stuff on the internet, our government is trying to enact controls that are just as strict as China's, which is something we were always told was so bad and evil. Like, you know, China's bad, evil government, like knows everything you search. And now here in the US, Ted Cruz and all the these Democrats, Mark Warner, Richard Blumenthal, they want you to like scan your face before you

Google something and every single thing that you consume and, you know, say is going to be tied to your government ID. Like, and that seems so dystopian because it's like we're getting actually mass surveillance in this like, quote unquote Chinese style, but by, I would argue, significantly more authoritarian government. And it's, it's not that by bringing up this point, we're saying, oh, Chinese government, the Chinese government is perfect. Like, oh, there's no problems over there. But it's more so this hypocrisy, this ridiculous belief that China has this major issue with repression and governmental control, but not the United States of America, not the U.S. where they wanted to take TikTok out of the hands of the Chinese with the argument of, oh, we need to protect American privacy. Meanwhile, we don't have any data privacy laws, no legislation in that department, and wanted to put it in the hands of Americans in the hands of people like the Ellisons who think that we should all be surveilled by artificial intelligence at all times to make us better citizens. That that's what we should all have like our own private AI model that's surveilling us and reporting back.

It's ridiculous or like how much violence there is that is either being enacted within our borders or outside. of our borders. I mean, how do you look at the United States violent imperialist attitudes and actions and then try and say that another country, that China is the problem? It kind of seems like the United States on a global stage is often causing these issues. Whether it's Iran, whether it's our support of Israel, you know, whether it is in Venezuela, whether it's now Trump with Greenland, Kind of seems to be the common denominator here. Yeah, I know. We're always at the scene of the crime.

It's funny, though, and I do, yeah, I think you make such a good point because it's like China's not perfect either. Like, none of these countries are good. I'm very against the surveillance stuff that goes on there. But, I mean, there's this really good Instagram video and the girl and it was talking about, you know, this meme and stuff and saying that people who are making this content, especially like Americans, like you said, a lot of like white Americans are often not engaging with the real China. Like most of us in America have not even been to China, but it's sort of this symbolic

version of China that a lot of people have sort of constructed that it kind of embodies everything Americans feel like they're losing, which is a sense of community, safety, trust in the government, accessibility, like it seems like this paradise almost that every Americans can kind of like project their hopes onto because our country feels so hopeless. Yeah, it is, it's something where a lot of these memes are surface-levely, but I think beneath it all is this kind of larger attitude that Americans are feeling towards their government towards the American just a way of life in general.

And I think especially young people who are just pretty disillusioned. They're not kind of buying what's been sold to them as far as the American dream. and the American way of life. And they're looking around and seeing things happening in other countries and I think it's really appealing.

And that's the thing that the American government and those in power are terrified of. They're terrified of actually losing that control. They're terrified of these changing attitudes. And that's why they want to get rid of TikTok. One thing I think that makes me nervous about all of this that I've noticed recently is this, is this like, again, because Americans right now are projecting so much onto China that I think

they're also accepting things that I don't think we should accept, like mass surveillance, but also I think of like the conversation around only fans. And people might argue, oh, it's like this pox on society or whatever. I am pro, only fans of creators being able to monetize their likeness and image. But China announced that it was sort of cracked on on moral decay or they've curtailed, you know, certain storylines in these like short form dramas in some ways. And there is this kind of like nationalistic like oversight of like entertainment and information. And it's scary to see some leftists that I think are so China-pilled, which I, you know, we love China too, say, oh, that's a good thing.

Or this idea, like, last thing I'll say on this too is like there's this completely false idea that like China on Doyen, which is their version of TikTok is somehow like better. And the kids are just reading academic articles all day. And there's no brain rot in China, which is just so completely untrue and like so far. false and actually people there are like completely on technology just as much as our kids are on technology kids are on screens from very young ages they're often you know to help with their academic performance which they do very well at but it does worry me because i'm like wait a minute we have to have some nuance we actually don't want any government putting moralistic like views on content or restricting access to information i almost trust china's government to do it more than us but we certainly don't

want the u.s government doing it i think there's kind of this china glazing that does not allow any of that and it's all, it's like America's socks, sure, but China is perfect kind of attitude. It's not perfect. There's no, there's no government or country that's perfect. And I think there are things, okay, so China's just overall level of, you know, quality of public education, the access to it and the quality of it better in China than over in the United States. But technology is so imprinted into every facet of China. culture. That was one thing going over there is everything is an app. Everything. It's all integrated into one or two apps. So absolutely everything just at the touch of, you know, touch of one simple app.

In Chinese entertainment, it's very difficult to have anything that's raunchy or not family friendly. It just doesn't fly with the Chinese government. So it's difficult for films and other forms of entertainment to kind of get through those moral parameters, whereas there's not as much of an emphasis on religion, like there is in the United States, okay, the way that Christian nationalism just runs everything. There are still these high moral bars to get over in order to have something be approved by the government. So like that definitely is limiting. For instance, you can't have haunted houses in China because in Chinese entertainment because the Communist Party does not like anything superstition. So it's different than things we deal with in America, but there are still these

stipulations because of what the government allows and what they don't. So no, it's not perfect. I get annoyed when there's just the China glaze in the form of if you point out anything that's like not ideal in China or with just their point. political system, then you're now like an American propagandist. You're now, you're hating on China. You're doing the thing. Yeah. I just feel like it's like China did get decades and probably centuries of bad American

propaganda. And like almost everything that we are taught about them is false. Like that is real, right? Like the American government has put this concerted effort to villainize this country that did not deserve to be villainized in my opinion. And it's actually really great. But as you said, nowhere is perfect. This is like China is one of the biggest countries on earth.

Just the way that we're a massive country, I'm sure there's tons of bad stuff there that is stupid, that some dumb law, right, that like is probably not good. And also it's like you have to consider that like laws or rulings or things that are enacted in China are going to inherently because their government functions so radically differently than ours be enacted in different ways. So we don't even want to like think of these things as like one to one other than recognize that our own government is lying to us and is grifting and sending billions of dollars abroad. and we probably could have high speed rail, and that, that does suck. Didn't you have Arunon recently? You were talking about the Tamils? Yes. You were talking about China's role in assisting the ethnic cleansing and genital.

So there's like, I know I mentioned the haunted house example, which is obviously much lower stakes compared to, compared to like assisting an ethnic cleansing campaign. But anyway, I think there are examples across the spectrum, both culturally, politically, that make China not a perfect country. And yet at the end of the day, too, so much anti-China propaganda, it's good that we're getting through that.

It's good that we are kind of dissolving. The pro-America attitudes, you know, America is the greatest country on earth, and its enemy China is not. And I think people having a more nuanced understanding now and not just seeing things so black and white. That's good. I'm excited for the upcoming Chinese century

as a new sort of Chinese culture appreciator. I feel like it seems cool, and I'm glad to see more. Everyone is about to be if they're not already in a very Chinese time. Caroline, thank you so much for joining me today. Thank you for having me on. I'm always happy to talk about what it means to China Max and to be Chinese.

And I wish everybody listening to this a very Chinese time. in their lives. All right, that's it for the show. Don't forget to subscribe to my tech and online culture and newsletter at usermag.co. That's usermag.com, where I send a biweekly roundup of everything that I'm reading and seeing online.

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