Youngest Generation’s New Trend, ‘Chinamaxxing,’ Most Hypocritical

Across the Western world, young people of all ethnic backgrounds are becoming Chinese.

“Becoming Chinese,” aka “Chinamaxxing,” is an absurd social media trend that has emerged over the past year. Those who want to become Chinese start by adopting mundane Chinese habits: drinking hot water or Tsingtao beer, walking with their hands clasped behind their back, wearing slippers indoors, and seeking traditional Chinese medicine remedies. (RELATED: China Is Trying It Both Ways: A Diplomatic Balance)

Chinamaxxing practitioners vary in their sincerity.

“It’s partly meme logic, but it’s also a sign of growing cultural cachet,” said Shaoyu Yuan, a professor at New York University’s Center for Global Affairs. said The New York Times (NYT).

Singaporean journalist and activist Melissa Chen described this trend as a “psychological operation to convert young Westerners into communist sympathizers by exoticizing everyday Chinese habits and aesthetics through viral trends on social networks.

“It also pushes hyper-consumption to generate demand for Chinese products at a time when tensions between the United States and China are escalating,” Chen said. wrote on X.

For some, adopting Chinese manners and habits is a way to signal their distaste for the United States. culture.

“To me, it feels like a way to resist — in a subtle way, it’s more of an undercurrent — and to protest a government that doesn’t care about keeping people healthy,” Renn Lazzerin, 33, told the New York Times.

Hasan Piker, a popular far-left Twitch streamer, engaged in “chinamaxxing” while on vacation.

This is a scam because Chinamaxxing is not possible.

For what? Many areas are “restricted” for security reasons, requiring additional permits beyond visas, curfews, checkpoints and bans.

Please tell me if you can freely go to Tibet, Xinjiang, Inner Mongolia (see if… pic.twitter.com/xgPGscaZF4

– Melissa Chen (@MsMelChen) November 17, 2025

China is engaging in its own form of Chinamaxxing – or rather HanChinesemaxxing.

China is close to approving an “ethnic unity” proposal, which appears designed to assimilate ethnic minorities into the predominantly Han Chinese culture.

“The people of every ethnic group, all organizations and groups in the country, the armed forces, every party and social organization, every enterprise, must forge a common consciousness of the Chinese nation in accordance with the law and the constitution, and bear the responsibility for building this consciousness,” reads the proposal, according to Politico.

The proposed law mandates the use of Mandarin Chinese in compulsory education. The legislation also describes “mutually integrated community environments.”

“The intention is to encourage Han and other minorities to migrate toward each other,” Minglang Zhou, a professor at the University of Maryland, told Politico. (RELATED: CIA Releases Video Encouraging Chinese Officers to Inform About the CCP)

I do not oppose such assimilation measures. But I suspect, given the underlying anti-American sentiment among Chinamaxx’s most serious supporters, that they would feverishly protest any comparable “ethnic unity” law proposed by American lawmakers.

There is a hilarity among Westerners who adore minorities who turn to China as a means of protesting the American establishment. This could be hypocrisy. Or it could be a revealed preference. Lefties are not primarily concerned with the autonomy of ethnic minorities. They are consumed by resentment toward the West and are fond of any political or cultural movement that promotes this resentment.

Follow Natalie Sandoval on X: @NatSandovalDC