In the past decade, pictures of Dubai have spread online. They sell weird stuff, where fast cars take you and your partner to an endless series of clean supermarkets protected from the heat, then a party on the roof as the sun goes down. Security is always emphasized, meaning that Dubai will keep “those people” from bothering you. It is a fantasy of how living in a society should be, where you are never supposed to exist with the businesses that life brings.
The dream was built by an army of lobbyists, either directly paid and the government of Dubai or hold the image of the city to try to build their online empires. Even if Iranian drones and missiles hit skyscrapersDubai influencers continue prepare the picture which the city wants to see. Now China is trying that same playbook—with surprising success.
In the past decade, pictures of Dubai have spread online. They sell weird stuff, where fast cars take you and your partner to an endless series of clean supermarkets protected from the heat, then a party on the roof as the sun goes down. Security is always emphasized, meaning that Dubai will keep “those people” from bothering you. It is a fantasy of how living in a society should be, where you are never supposed to exist with the businesses that life brings.
The dream was built by an army of lobbyists, either directly paid and the government of Dubai or hold the image of the city to try to build their online empires. Even if Iranian drones and missiles hit skyscrapersDubai influencers continue prepare the picture which the city wants to see. Now China is trying that same playbook—with surprising success.
“Chinamaxxing” has emerged as a social media trend in the past few years, with Westerners taking a keen interest in content about life in China and continuing the trend back home by trying to “be Chinese” by doing things like squatting, drinking hot water and smoking. a trip to China at the beginning of 2025, which was a viral sensation in the United States and China.
It’s good content—a free ride in a country once full of the kind of people-to-people content that the Chinese government encourages, and full of the kinds of relatable and shareable experiences that play well on the short-form video network.
It’s also the type of content that platforms in China struggle to deliver. Top-down media—including traditional Chinese media, such as CGTN television and Every day in China magazine—produces predetermined results, but the Internet of the mid-2020s thrives on the assumption of self-sustainability and authenticity. The primary role of a content producer is to create events and content that look real, however drawn they are behind the scenes.
Sure, China has a thriving market for this kind of content, but Great Firewall and language barriers keep it largely within China, which is why Chinamaxxing has come through Western influencers. Influencers are also good soft power tools because their job is to act as culture boosters. Businesses know this well—which is why influencers with less than 10,000 followers can sometimes still make $1,500 per video.
Increasing influence in this way is a new strategy, although China has long tried to damage its international image. The world remembers the 2008 Summer Olympics, and we have lived for decades in the imagination of Western professionals who have taken the train from Beijing to Shanghai or visited some factories and he witnessed the future. Those are top-down lobbying activities, and the fingerprints of the government or PR pushes by big Chinese corporations are visible because they have access to spaces that no ordinary person would have access to. It echoes the old, Soviet style of propaganda, with endless lists and numbers.
Chinamaxxing does not have similar easily identifiable marks. Even previous efforts, such as the early 2020s attempts at whitewashing human rights violationsit gave lobbyists a mandate to work on and dictate their journeys. It’s a change from the old style to that of Dubai, where the strip is full of posts from “relatable” people who experience the world as ordinary people rather than through organized actions from government agencies, and it works for a much larger audience.
Chinamaxxing is defined not on its own terms, but as a response to life in Western cities. It is less in the idea that Dubai or Shanghai are good places to live in themselves, but more that these places are substitutes for the problems that Western viewers see in their own backyards. If the income tax in your country is bothering you, or you don’t want your money going to people who you think don’t deserve it, then you can move to a place where the force is guaranteed to be on your side. That has always been the promise of Dubai.
The Chinese city of Chongqing is also popular online because it makes for a great backdrop for its content—all the skyscrapers rising up the riverbank that play tricks like a cabin built into the side of a hill, with shiny new buildings across the river that light up at night. It’s like it was made for the camera.
More importantly, it is the opposite of what the American city looks like. China is not necessarily a real place in the Chinamaxxing world, with people and problems and politics. Chinamaxxing is not about what China is. It is about creating something in the American mind that is everything America is not, similar to the distorted mirror created by lobbyists in Dubai. It’s not a real place; it is the history of American anxiety.
You don’t see Chongqing which has elderly farmers who ride the subway in the city to sell their produce on the roads to survive, or hukou the obstacles that have put them in that situation. You see Hongyadong and Chaotianmen because they look like the future, not rural Hebei, except there are enough smiling faces there eager to interact with a stranger. You don’t have to think about it to fall of real estate market-Just look at how much cheaper their rent is than yours in these beautiful new apartments.
In Dubai and China, cheap labor plays a role in building a fantasy world that is projected. Dubai’s glittering skyline was built by migrant workers, and the expat lifestyle there is built on the backs of internal work. China does not need foreign labor to build this fantasy because the hukou system-which prevents rural people from accessing quality urban services – and a population of 1.4 billion ensures that there is a seemingly endless supply of internal migrants to build new apartments, clean your house, and deliver food.
You may have your Western concerns about decline and downward mobility, and the balm looks at countries like China, where GDP per capita is a sixth of what it is in the United States, or countries that import workers from places where the gap is even greater.
That is the message shared by Dubai and China online. Whether it’s Dubai’s emphasis on security and stability or China’s alluring view of the future, both backed by cheap labor, the message from both is the same—look at what your political system can’t do. They are the political equivalent of lobbyists with perfect teeth and hair living a life you can’t afford, who remind you of all the things you don’t like about your own life. Wouldn’t you be happier if you were more like them?
But as with any influencer, the reality is very different from the picture on your phone. You don’t see what makes the content, or the country, happen, and you certainly don’t see the problems they are trying to hide.
