Wouldn’t It Be Nice to Live in a Society With No “Kill Line”?
For many in the United States, life is bleak — so bleak that some look to China and see an alternative, decently functioning society that doesn’t allow its citizens to fall below a “kill line.”
With a sense of hope for a better future collapsing for many in the United States, China is starting to look a bit more appealing. (Jade Gao / AFP via Getty Images)
This morning, the Guardian’s Amy Hawkins offers a delightful split-screen portrait of global consciousness, highlighting two trends playing out in parallel on US and Chinese social media.
On US platforms like TikTok and Instagram, “young people are diving into the joys of Chinese culture — from drinking hot water to playing mahjong — all under the banner of ‘Chinamaxxing,’” she writes.
On the Chinese internet, meanwhile, “the US is losing its decades-long grip on soft power, and is instead being replaced by a darker trend: the kill line.”
Hawkins explains that Chinese social media, blogs, and academic journals have lately taken to depicting “a vision of the US as a dystopian capitalist hell,” governed by what a Chinese news presenter called “a ‘kill line’ in American society where the middle class plummets into the underclass.”
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