Introduction
The Chinamaxxing trend emerged in 2025 on TikTok and YouTube, as content creators discovered their Chinese roots, regardless of their actual heritage.
These non-Chinese creators shared brief clips of themselves drinking warm water, wearing Chinese fashion items such as indoor slippers, using chopsticks, eating Chinese cuisine, or practising tai chi, often captioned: “You met me at a very Chinese time of my life”.
Chinamaxxing – A response to social or political change
Academics have argued that this digital trend, like all digital trends, is more than an aesthetic blip, but rather a response to social or political change.
According to Isabella Lee’s summation, it is partly due to disillusionment with the US’s legitimacy as a cultural or political force under President Donald Trump, an obsession with Chinese health, wellness and dietary habits, and the historic exoticisation of the East: “In true internet fashion, it is equal parts nonsensical and reductive”.
The Chinese Trump
If Chinamaxxing is part social media nonsense and part a knee-jerk response to Trump’s America, how should we understand the reverse trend: non-Americans performing fragments of American culture?
Consider the rise of Chinese online personalities, such as Chongqing-based Ryan Chen (瑞哥英语), often described as the “Chinese Trump”.
Performing this persona for local and global audiences in Chinese contexts, Chen draws on Trump’s distinctive accent, mannerisms and speech style, reframing them within Chinese social and cultural contexts.
Parody
Chen’s strikingly accurate mimicry of Trump’s voice and gestures doesn’t necessarily celebrate American culture. Instead, it parodies Trump himself with laser-like intent.
Ironically, this coincides with the West’s embrace of Chinese culture, a knee-jerk reaction to Trump. All roads lead to Trump, it seems.
We’re all Americamaxxing now. The whole world is living through a very American time in our lives.