I have been Chinese my whole life. Lately, many online have also found their Chinese roots, but not through traditional ancestry tests. Creators are drinking hot water, wearing slippers around the house, using chopsticks, eating Chinese food, and wearing red. Taking off in popularity from mid-2025, these videos have racked up hundreds of thousands of views, finding virality first on TikTok, then later Instagram and X. Put simply, “people are trying to be more Chinese regardless of what their heritage is,” says Michelle She, a London-based fashion label owner. Chinamaxxing…
Tag: Digital media
X suspends 800m accounts in one year amid ‘massive’ scale of manipulation attempts
Elon Musk’s X said it had suspended 800m accounts over a 12-month period as it fights the “massive” scale of attempts to manipulate the platform. The social media company told MPs it was continually fighting state-backed attempts to hijack the agenda on its network, with Russia the most prolific state actor, followed by Iran and China. As part of the battle against such content, X suspended 800m accounts in 2024 for breaching its rules on platform manipulation and spam, although it did not reveal which of those suspensions related to…
Gen Z flocks to Chinese medicine as trust in US health system plummets: ‘It’s so personalized to being human’
Did you drink ice water today? If you did, that was “not very Chinese of you”, according to Sherry Zhu, a 23-year-old Chinese American creator based in New Jersey. If you were really serious about “becoming Chinese”, you would be sipping hot water every day, she warned in a TikTok video with millions of views. “I really do feel like, digestion-wise, a lot better when I’m drinking hot water,” she later explained to GQ. Zhu’s guidance is taken from traditional Chinese medicine (TCM), a health system that dates back 5,000…
TikTok signs Trump-backed deal to sell US entity to American investors
TikTok has signed a deal to sell its US business to three American investors – Oracle, Silver Lake and MGX – ensuring the popular social video platform can continue operating in the United States. The deal is expected to close on 22 January, according to an internal memo seen by he Associated Press and Reuters. The TikTok chief executive officer, Shou Zi Chew, said in the memo that ByteDance and TikTok have signed binding agreements with the three investors. The new TikTok US joint venture will be 50% held by…
‘Americans are democracy’s equivalent of second-generation wealth’: a Chinese journalist on the US under Trump
On a Friday night in late May, Wang Jian was getting ready to broadcast. It was pouring outside, and he was sitting in the garage apartment behind his house, just outside Boston, eating dinner. “I am very sensitive to what Trump does,” Wang was telling me, in Mandarin, waving a fork. “When Trump holds a cabinet meeting, he sits there and the people next to him start to flatter him. And I think, isn’t this the same as Mao Zedong? Trump sells the same thing: a little bit of populism,…
Frequent TikTok users in Taiwan more likely to agree with pro-China narratives, study finds
Taiwanese people who spend large amounts of time on TikTok are more likely to agree with some pro-China narratives, a survey has suggested. The study, conducted by the Taiwan-based DoubleThink Lab, surveyed people across Taiwan in March, asking a series of questions about politics and democracy in Taiwan and China, and their views on unification of the two sides. It found that among the respondents, agreement with criticisms of Taiwan’s domestic issues, and with the prospect of unifying with China, rose as TikTok use increased, before dropping again among the…
Draining cities dry: the giant tech companies queueing up to build datacentres in drought-hit Latin America
It is a warehouse the size of 12 football pitches that promises to create much-needed jobs and development in Caucaia city, north-east Brazil. But it won’t have shelves stocked with products. This vast building will be a datacentre, believed to be earmarked for TikTok, the Chinese-owned video-sharing app, as part of a 55bn reais (£7.3bn) project to expand its global datacentre infrastructure. As the demand for supercomputer facilities rises, fuelled by the AI boom, Brazil is attracting more and more tech companies. The choice of Caucaia is no accident. Several…
Why is US threatening to ban TikTok and will other countries follow suit?
Joe Biden has signed into law a bill that requires TikTok’s Chinese owner to sell the social media app’s US operations or face a ban, after the Senate passed the legislation. The law, part of a foreign aid package for Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan, sets the clock ticking on a potential ban for a platform that is hugely popular in the US. Here is a guide to the TikTok legislation and what may happen next. How does the legislation pave the way for a sale or ban? The bill gives…
Congress is right to want to curtail TikTok’s power and influence | Nita Farahany
Imagine a world where America’s foreign adversaries don’t need spies or hackers to infiltrate our society or meddle with our democracy. Instead, they can deploy a far more insidious tool: a digital platform, addictive by design, that captivates its users and then mobilizes them to influence our democratic institutions. The scenario may sound farfetched, but something like that recently happened. Earlier this month, while the US Congress was considering a bill that would curtail TikTok’s operations in the United States, the popular, Chinese-owned social media platform confronted its users with…
Is the US really preparing to ban TikTok?
The House of Representatives passed a bill Wednesday that would require TikTok owner ByteDance to sell the social media platform or face a total ban in the United States. The legislation now moves to the Senate, where its likelihood of passing is uncertain. But with a landslide of support in the House – 352 Congress members voted in favor of the bill and only 65 voted against – it’s clear that TikTok is facing its biggest existential threat yet in the US. Here’s what you need to know about the…