Emma Li

Making appreciating Chinese culture into a joke or trend of sorts can feel gimmicky and ingenuine. It will eventually come to pass, and a new ethnicity may eventually take its place, whether to be mocked or seemingly sought after.

Do you remember “Bing chilling?” How about “Super idol?” When countless memes surrounding China circulated the internet in 2022, I laughed along, feeling a vague sense of happiness that China was getting its time in the spotlight of popular internet culture. At first, I found these China-centric memes lighthearted and harmless, but as I kept seeing “social credit” or “bing chilling” spammed in the comment sections of any random East Asian person, it truly began to feel like mockery. 

Not long after the widespread hatred towards people of East Asian ethnicity following the COVID-19 pandemic, memes highlighting and emphasizing the otherness of Chinese people were widespread from 2021 to 2022. But now, just 4 years later, meme culture seems to love China, and “becoming Chinese” is suddenly the new desirable thing, with the phrase “being in a very Chinese time of one’s life” circulating widely online.  

Hypothetically, one could argue that these Chinese memes are simply cultural appreciation. To some extent, I agree, but making appreciating Chinese culture into a joke or trend of sorts can feel gimmicky and ingenuine. Furthermore, reflecting on a past only four years ago where widespread consensus was to mock China and Chinese people, it’s all too easy to remember that this wave of praise is nothing but a trend. It will eventually come to pass, and a new ethnicity may eventually take its place, whether to be mocked or seemingly sought after. 

The Western world’s current fixation on East Asian countries highlights how strange it is that we as a society choose to make certain ethnicities and cultures a trend. Japan and South Korea both became cultural favorites of the West when anime went mainstream, or when Hallyu (the Korean Wave) went global in the late 2010s. But only a few years ago, China was still being looked down upon by the West and especially America, perhaps due in part to government actions fueling an anti-China sentiment.

Now that China has seemingly joined the ranks of its fellow East Asian countries, it receives the same level of praise that Japan and South Korea, with soft power through music and animated shows, have received from youth and Western media for years. But even as Chinese culture gets its time in the apparent spotlight, South and Southeast Asian countries continue to face prejudice and stereotyping online, and the cycle of hatred continues. 

This social media praise towards China also oversimplifies geopolitical tensions. In a time where the United States government faces widespread criticism from its own citizens, the China trend glosses over China’s own flaws in order to compare it favorably against the U.S.’s shortcomings.

I’m all for highlighting Chinese culture and bringing it to western mainstream media, as well as recognizing the technological and infrastructural achievements of the nation. However, by offering exaggerated and oftentimes humorous praise, this trend has created an environment where any discussion about China is monolithically positive. Regardless of whether the memes’ complete praise is just another form of mockery, it still ultimately makes any of its Chinese-U.S. comparisons lack nuance. People have made images editing Chinese president Xi Jinping into a gigachad face alongside the phrase “the Chinese century.” In doing so, they overlook the CCP’s flaws—from the oppression of minority groups and intolerance of political dissent to surveillance—in order to be comedic.

Overall, we shouldn’t be treating cultures as a trend to suddenly start praising and partaking in (e.g. drinking warm water in the mornings and wearing jade bracelets in order to “be Chinese”). We must keep in mind that memes and internet humor tend to oversimplify topics as complex as cultural appreciation, and that we really shouldn’t be looking to trends to educate oneself about other cultures. There is nothing wrong with wanting to appreciate and learn about foreign traditions, but we should be doing this all the time, regardless of what’s currently in vogue.