In two online worlds that are normally divided, a mirroring of sorts has occurred in recent months. On TikTok and Instagram, young people are immersing themselves in the pleasures of Chinese culture, from drinking hot water to playing mahjong, all under the slogan “Chinamaxxing.” However, on the Chinese Internet, the United States is losing its decades-long dominance of soft power and is instead being replaced by a darker trend: the death line.
The death line is a dangerous place. In games, the term refers to the point at which a player’s strength is so depleted that one more hit could lead to their total elimination. In China, the term refers to the risks that come with daily life in the United States.
In recent months, Chinese media has been inundated with debates about the so-called “death line” that exists in American society. Social media posts, news articles, podcasts, and blogs paint a vision of America as a dystopian capitalist hellscape. A video shared by a state account on RedNote shows a homeless man talking about how he used to earn a six-figure salary. (The publication claims that the video comes from the US and that the man won $450,000; in fact, the clip is taken from an old video about homelessness on the streets of London.)
Another case that has gone viral is that of Tylor Chase, a former Nickelodeon star who was recently seen homeless on the streets of California. A Chinese news anchor said: “Tylor’s fate confirms the existence of a ‘death line’ in American society where the middle class plummets toward the lower class… This ‘death line’ exposes the dual nature of America: winners achieve ultimate success, while losers fall into an abyss from which there is no return.”
In total, hashtags related to the US “death line” have been viewed more than 600 million times on Weibo, a Chinese social media platform.
Chinese propaganda has long portrayed the West as a land of poverty and depravity. One day in 1968, during the early years of the Cultural Revolution, the official newspaper of the Chinese Communist Party, the People’s Daily, published no less than three articles describing the United States as a kind of hell, ravaged by widespread famine and an elite of “bloodsucking” billionaires. One described the United States simply as: “A paradise for the rich, a hell for the poor.”
But ordinary people nevertheless tended to see the United States as a land of opportunity and prosperity, especially after China began to open up in the 1980s and there was greater flow of information between the two countries.
At the end of 2025, that changed.
The latest trend began in November, when a Chinese student living in Seattle posted a five-hour broadcast on the Chinese video-sharing website BiliBili. In the video, which has since attracted more than 3 million views, he describes seeing hungry children on Halloween and the harsh realities of life for disadvantaged people in the world’s largest economy. Soon, the term “death line” took on a life of its own.
In January, the Chinese Communist Party’s official theoretical journal, Qiushi, published a commentary claiming that the death line “reveals the structural economic fragility of American society.” A few weeks later, a journalist from a Chinese state media repeatedly asked US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent about the so-called death line in Davos. A confused Bessent talked about Trump’s economic policy before saying, “I don’t understand the question.”
“We have known for a long time that China has been admiring the United States, regardless of the official rhetoric,” says Wang Haolan, a research associate at the Asia Society in New York. But a series of events – from the 2008 economic crisis to the election of Donald Trump and the United States’ handling of the Covid-19 pandemic – have turned that admiration into curiosity about the “confusion” in the country, Wang says.
Ren Yi, an influential nationalist commentator who blogs under the name President Rabbit, says Trump’s re-election and the US-China trade war are the biggest reasons for the Chinese people’s plummeting respect for the United States. “Chinese people are now much more critical of the United States. Their attitude toward the United States has constantly changed, which is closely related to the changing balance of power between the two nations,” Ren says.
According to Ren, while China has poverty problems, social and cultural factors make it unlikely that people will end up on the streets. “In China, you can always get support from both close and extended family, you always have someone to help you.” The Chinese who observe the problems in the United States “don’t understand it.”
Homelessness in the United States is a growing problem. In 2024, there were more than 771,000 homeless people, an 18% increase from the previous year and a record high, according to the National Alliance to End Homelessness, a nonprofit organization based in Washington, DC.
In China, the problem is more difficult to quantify because the internal passport system, called huko, counts people based on where they are registered (usually at birth) rather than where they live. Millions of domestic migrants live in overcrowded, unsanitary accommodation on the outskirts of big cities, often floating between dormitories depending on their jobs, but would not officially be counted as homeless.
Severe destitution is hidden from public view, while the government’s success in eradicating extreme poverty – a milestone that Chinese President Xi Jinping said was achieved in 2021 – is frequently promoted in the official narrative.
Many Chinese see some truth in the idea that the possibility of total social catastrophe is more likely in the United States than in China.
But while Internet users in China gasp at the idea of an America torn apart by poverty and chaos, for their American counterparts it is quite the opposite. With “Chinamaxxing,” American teenagers delight in traditional Chinese lifestyle tricks, like drinking hot water or wearing slippers indoors. The trend slogan? “You met me at a very Chinese moment in my life.”
The Chinese government is welcoming this. Beijing is boosting tourism, relaxing visa requirements for visitors from many European countries, including most recently the United Kingdom. Influencers willing to tell a rosy story about the more attractive aspects of life in China – while avoiding more sensitive issues such as human rights and political oppression – have been welcomed with open arms. Meanwhile, in the United States, a country that, unlike China, for the most part allows journalists to freely report on the worst aspects of society as well as the best, its government’s most thuggish behavior is being broadcast to audiences of millions, damaging its global reputation.
A useful distraction?
Some commentators see the death line meme as a way for Chinese people to vent or distract their own frustrations at home. Nearly one in five young people aged between 16 and 24 are unemployed, according to official statistics, and some economists estimate the real level could be much higher. Low wages and slow growth have led to an era of economic pessimism that the government wants to combat. Promoting the supposed “kill line” that exists in the United States could be a useful distraction.
“China currently has several social problems of its own, but by making it known that the West is also doing poorly – or even suggesting that the West is worse than China – you create an image that gives people a sense of psychological well-being,” says Wang Qinglin, a Chinese writer living in Germany. “Someone who would have originally been critical of the Chinese government may, after seeing these problems in Western society, adopt a more positive attitude.”
Some people “find positive energy by observing the misery of people in the United States,” Ren says.
Commentators who have attempted to draw a more explicit link between the death line meme and China’s internal problems have been quickly censored.
Photography: Getty Images
In a since-deleted essay, legal blogger Li Yuchen wrote that nationalism attacking the United States had become a lucrative niche for influencers. “It doesn’t solve any of your problems: your stocks won’t recover, your mortgage won’t decrease a single cent,” Li wrote. Content like this is like “a cheap dose of ‘patriotic aphrodisiac’.”
Henry Gao, a professor at Singapore Management University’s Yong Pung How Law School, says official promotion of the so-called American “death line” suggests the Chinese government is trying to deflect from domestic economic problems.
“This is a recurring pattern in China, where attention is often diverted to perceived problems in other countries whenever major domestic challenges arise, with the United States typically being the first target,” Gao said.
Additional research by Lillian Yang
