Foreign desk: Anna Fifield on #Chinamaxxing and it’s latest notable unlikely convert
Soft-toy power: The Labubu has become ubiquitous among Western influencers. Photo / Getty Images
As China rapidly pursues hard power, building everything from aircraft carriers and stealth fighter jets to underwater drones, it has also embarked on a huge soft-power push. It’s been trying to make China not just great but cool, too.
This is a big part of Beijing’s effort to assert global dominance across all domains: political, diplomatic, military and cultural. Following a playbook laid out by South Korea with its “Korean wave”, China has had a surprising amount of success in this arena.
Ne Zha 2, a Chinese movie about a mythical boy who battles demons, became the biggest animated film of all time last year. People flocked to stores to buy a Labubu, the “ugly-cute” soft toy that became a celebrity must-have. The Black Myth: Wukong video game was a global hit.
Audiences delighted at videos of China’s humanoid robots that could dance, run marathons and play football – even when they fell over. And BYD, the electric car brand now ubiquitous on the streets of New Zealand, overtook Tesla as the world’s top seller of EVs.
Indocrination has been aided by a sharp relaxation in visa rules. Citizens from scores of countries – including New Zealand – can now enter China visa-free for 30 days.
This has had an immediate impact: visitors to China marvel at incredible high-rises, super-efficient trains, robots delivering noodles. They don’t see censorship and repression and the complete absence of free speech.
When Darren Jason Watkins Jr, an American YouTuber better known as IShowSpeed (no I hadn’t heard of him, either), went to Chongqing last year, he showed his audience a city of 23 million with cyberpunk vibes: subway trains that disappear into buildings and mountains, and hotpot restaurants in refurbished World War II bomb shelters. He attracted millions of views.
This soft-power push has led to another cultural phenomenon, a trend known as “Chinamaxxing” – a play on “looksmaxxing,” or optimising their appearance (I hadn’t heard of that one, either).
Gen Zers are taking to TikTok to show themselves “at a very Chinese time in my life” – doing things like drinking hot water, wearing slippers, using chopsticks, wearing red. This is often accompanied by the hashtag #newlychinese.
Experts say this portrayal of the East as exotic is partly driven by disillusionment with the West. “In true internet fashion, it is equal parts nonsensical and reductive,” one told The Guardian.