Starmer's Beijing trip, Taiwan's political stalemate and the meaning of 'Chinamaxxing'

Is it only February?

It’s been a busy couple of weeks for British China-watchers, given the Prime Minister’s trip to China. It was a controversial trip, of course, but I thought it went as well as could be hoped for. There’s a lot criticism of Keir Starmer for not having procured ‘much’ by way of business for the UK. I posted a long-ish commentary on X about why I disagree:

A lot of criticism today that Keir Starmer hasn't secured 'much' for his trip to China.

I see it differently. Imagine if Starmer had come back with a blockbuster, all-singing all-dancing deal, worth billions, vastly important to the UK economy, etc etc...

...would that not leave the UK heralding the beginning of another golden era, mistakenly creating vast new reliances on China? Would critics not then be criticising him for having linked the economies too much?

...and how would Trump feel then? If Starmer came out as if Xi's best friend or the UK was perceived to totally pivot to China? I imagine he'd put the UK on the naughty step, next to Canada.

IMO the goal of this trip wasn't any quick cash or gifts, but to return to the normal pace of diplomacy where leaders of countries meet each other, visit each other.

Dialogue with China is not the be-all and end-all of a new British foreign policy. London needs to work more at building relationships and supply chains with other likeminded middle powers. But that's a medium term thing. In the short term, it's about keeping relations with the superpowers warm - that means China and, of course, the US.

Remarkably, none of the three pieces I wrote for The Times in the last fortnight have been about the visit, thanks to commissions by editors. But if you want to hear more about what I think on the issue, I was back on The Spectator’s Coffee House Shots podcast on Saturday, joined by the excellent Sam Olsen (check out his Substack: States of Play by Sam Olsen):

My column today was a gear shift: taking a look at the relentless politicking that has dominated Taiwanese politics in the last two years, since the election of President William Lai returned a legislature controlled by the KMT and TPP.

The KMT has a new chairwoman, who seems dangerously optimistic in her analysis of cross-Strait relations. She is against Lai’s pledge to raise defence spending to 3 per cent by this year and 5 per cent by 2030, arguing that there would be peace across the Strait if only Taiwan’s government recognised the 1992 Consensus once more (that both sides of the Strait recognise there is only one China).

But it seems to me that Xi has proven his ambition and ruthlessness (not least with the latest round of military purges). Should the PLA, one day, gain undeniable military superiority over the military forces Taiwan can muster (and bear in mind today’s ambivalent America), Xi would certainly strike. So slowing the military build-up is a risky gamble to take on Taiwan’s future.

Taiwan’s political parties are in no mood to work constructively together. The last two years have been marked by unproductive parliamentary tussling, back and forth wrangling using legislative tools that remind me of the Brexit forever wars in the UK under Theresa May. I look at this in the column, and end on the story behind the Chinese saying: 鹬蚌相争，渔翁得利, ‘when the clam and the snipe fight, the fisherman wins out’.

As the bird tries to eat the clam, the clam shuts its shell and traps the snipe’s beak. While the two are immobile, stuck in their existential struggle, a fisherman comes by and captures both. If Taiwan’s political parties don’t snap out of it, it will be China that reaps the rewards.

And less seriously I’ve written about the extraordinary, bonkers and funny trend of ‘Chinamaxxing’, the latest and hottest Gen-Z trend on TikTok:

Videos of white boys partying in China with the caption “You met me at a very Chinese time in my life”. The 1980s Mandarin love song Yi Jian Mei (One Trim of Blossom) going viral (including an absurd clip of Trump and Biden singing it as a duet, presumably made by AI).

The latest phase of “Chinamaxxing” encourages you to get involved: “becoming Chinese” videos show Americans emulating Chinese life habits, from drinking hot water instead of cold to swapping your shoes for slippers when inside the house. “I don’t even call it Chinatown any more, I just call it ‘town’. That’s how Chinese my mind has become,” one meme says.

It’s the latest sign of a global generational divide on views of China – international polls and those in the UK and US have found that under-30s tend to have more favourable views of China. It’s probably a mix of reasons why: that the China they’ve grown up with has been wealthy and rising; that any country with enough hard power will eventually have soft power too (see Japan, and arguably Chinese soft power’s popularity has been delayed by its politics); that China seems a good mirror to hold up against what these youngsters perceive as dysfunction in western society at the moment.

I personally don’t put much stock in the argument that TikTok’s algorithm is pro-CCP – there has never been hard evidence that the Chinese government has tampered with the algorithm fed to international users via ByteDance. But I do warn about the potential whitewashing of the Chinese government. People like the influencer Hasan Piker (known to his 4.5 million followers on Twitch and YouTube as ‘Hasanabi’) promote only a simplistic, tourist’s view of the country. There’s sometimes only a fine line between love for the culture and apologism for the politics.

Things I’ve been reading:

• A Slow but Steady Acceleration (The Wire China) – excellent piece about the rollout of robotaxis in China, including details on how local Chinese authorities have dealt with companies whose cars have hit pedestrians. This area will be one to watch for the next Chinese tech success stories – but also the next case study for the dynamic between the citizen, the company and the government in China.

• In Depth: High Blood Pressure Is on the Rise in China’s Grade Schoolers (Caixin Global) – an underrated outcome of tiger parenting and China’s new wealth: record numbers of young children with high blood pressure, largely from obesity.

• The Gaslighting of Parasite (Marginal Revolution) – not a new piece and not an article on China either, but I included this review of Boon Jong-ho’s film Parasite from 2020 because I recently came across it and it very much resonated with me. The reviewer understands Parasite not as a film criticising the wealthy, as is the usual western/Hollywood interpretation, but actually as one criticising the poor. I can believe that such a view exists in South Korea – it certainly does in China, which can often be so socially Darwinian. There’s the phrase: 可怜之人必有可恨之处, or roughly translated: ‘those who seem pitiful have usually done something to deserve it’. In other words, the poor deserve it.