World is America-avoidant
Earlier this year, a spate of western TikTok and Instagram creators announced that they were at “a very Chinese time in my life” – drinking hot water and wearing slippers around their homes. The Chinamaxxing phenomenon primarily reflected the constant need of influencers for novel content. But social media trends also reflect a growing fascination with China, as the economic historian Adam Tooze has noted. While it broods over China’s economic, military and technical advance, the Trump administration is accelerating Beijing’s diplomatic progress, as striking new polling by the ...