A very Chinese time? How memes are paving way for soft power shift
Search results for "Chinese time" on TikTok / Captured from Google
Drinking hot water, eating warm congee and dressing in red to pray for good luck are daily rituals shared by social media users across the globe who have embraced a new lifestyle trend, declaring: "You met me at a very Chinese time in my life."
The phrase has been popularised over the past year by influencers on TikTok and Instagram who post themselves performing stereotypically Chinese activities.
The trend reflects a positive shift in how China, or "Chineseness", is perceived globally.
This has been partly shaped by political fatigue and polarisation in the United States, according to observers. However, some cautioned that it was unlikely to translate into a sustained change in attitudes towards China as a nation-state.
Shaoyu Yuan, an expert on soft power at New York University, said the trend reflected a broader transformation in how people experienced China online: not through official messaging or political headlines, but increasingly through entertainment, food and lifestyle routines.
He said this exposure made "Chineseness" feel familiar rather than foreign, and the perception of the trend as "authentic and playful" rather than forced was helpful for building soft power.
State media have responded to the meme, citing it as evidence of China's growing cultural influence.
The "largely positive" reactions to the trend showed "a sustained enthusiasm in Chinese everyday practices", official news agency Xinhua said in a commentary on Jan. 27.
It said China had "gradually emerged as a global trend", moving beyond cliches such as the cheongsam and kung fu.
The trend reflected a "deeper shift from lifestyle imitation to value alignment" between the East and West, as traditional wisdom became "legible when ... translated into modern routines", Xinhua said.
China watchers have noted a global mood shift in the country's favour - particularly since Donald Trump's return to the White House last year and the ensuing U.S. immigration crackdowns, tariff tensions and threats against Greenland and Venezuela.
Meanwhile, many in the U.S., especially younger generations, have shown increased interest in Chinese brands and technology, social media and travel, and this has now expanded to wellness and lifestyle habits.
"In a period of political fatigue and polarisation in the U.S., people gravitate toward low-stakes lifestyle content as a safe language for expressing what they want emotionally: comfort, order, practicality, self-care," Yuan said.
Chenchen Zhang, an associate professor of international relations at Durham University, said the trend did not necessarily relate to China, or reflect any concrete attitudes towards "China the nation-state".
Rather, she said, it was a result of "the proliferation of digital racial talk" on social media, where culture or racial identity is reduced to a handful of visual or consumable cues circulated for relatability or irony.
"The trend is not even about the [People's Republic of China] but ethnic and cultural Chineseness, which is not owned by the PRC," she said.
Zhang said there had nonetheless been a broader shift in narratives about China on social media - mostly about China being "hyper modern, futuristic [and] 'living in 2050'".
She noted that the meme had faced some criticism online, both from Chinese-Americans and Chinese nationals.
Yuan said it was "surface-level by design" and had the "short-term entertainment logic of any viral trend" while at times being "performative and fleeting".
But the sentiment it revealed was real, reflecting "something more genuine" in terms of how perceptions of China were changing, he said.
"It shows that 'Chineseness' is being referenced in a positive, everyday way, associated with comfort, practicality, wellness and routine, rather than only with geopolitics or suspicion," he said.
"That's meaningful because soft power rarely starts at the level of ideology. It usually starts as familiarity and voluntary imitation, small habits that make a culture feel normal and relatable."
Xie Feng, China's ambassador to the United States, hailed the trend in a speech in Philadelphia on Jan. 28. He encouraged more U.S. citizens to visit China in person.
Search results for "Chinese time" on TikTok / Captured from Google
"We sincerely welcome more American friends to embark on a trip to our country whenever they like, and experience for themselves a real, dynamic and panoramic China, which is both cool and welcoming," he said.
While social media users in the West embrace "becoming Chinese", a bleaker term has entered China's online lexicon: the "kill line". Originally a gaming term, it is now being used to describe the horror of American poverty - a financial threshold beyond which recovery becomes impossible.
Yuan said the contrast was meaningful, indicating something important about narrative competition today: different stories were being optimised for different audiences and different emotional needs.
He said the "U.S. kill line" debate was designed to interpret uncertainty through a lens of danger and hostility, which could be politically useful for Beijing as it "simplifies complexity and channels anxiety toward an external explanation".
Meanwhile, he said, the "becoming Chinese" trend was different because it had little to do with endorsing a government as it was "low-friction, lifestyle-coded and emotionally positive".
Pang Zhongying, a professor of international affairs at Sichuan University, said the way state media covered both trends reflected Beijing's traditional approach to soft power - one that championed China's perceived strengths while pointing out the shortcomings of other countries.
He said the "becoming Chinese" trend bore little resemblance to the lives of ordinary people, who faced high youth unemployment, rising affordability pressures and economic uncertainty.
While official messaging could create a favourable impression in the short term, such narratives were difficult to sustain over time, Pang said.
However, while the trend may be disconnected from the country's current reality, it could be planting the seeds for China's soft power future.
"This kind of trend can rarely build a 'house', but it can definitely open a 'door', especially with younger audiences," Yuan said.
"That matters because soft power is often generational ... If their baseline exposure to China includes not only geopolitics but also culture and humour through memes, they're more likely to carry a default sense of familiarity, and often a more balanced or at least less reflexively negative attitude into positions of influence later."
Read the article at SCMP.