A fascinating wave of "extreme Sinicization" has recently taken hold on foreign social media. Some Americans catch the spotlight by cooking traditional Chinese breakfast porridge at home, beaming as they declare, "Day one of becoming Chinese." Others post videos riding motorcycles through Chongqing’s mesmerizing multi-layered traffic, full of admiration.
Still, others share homemade drinks featuring Chinese ingredients, feeling they’re living a particularly "Chinese" phase of life. These lively, everyday posts are simply young people capturing their cross-cultural experiences. But some Western media have stretched this into a so-called "cultural security incident."
A recent article in the UK's Daily Telegraph captures this paranoia perfectly—this constant urge to "see conspiracy everywhere." While noting these videos "seem harmless," the report hastily brands their creators as "unwitting pawns in beautifying China’s image," even accusing them of "doing dirty work for China."
Their script is fixed: any China-related content that doesn’t criticize its political system must be "a carefully engineered propaganda campaign." The message is clear: you can only understand China through their narrow narrative; anything else means you are brainwashed.
The report also finds it baffling that, amid ongoing warnings from U.S. and U.K. governments about security risks and geopolitical tensions with China, these videos are surprisingly light-hearted and joyful—clearly a "staged facade." Western creators uploading this content to foreign platforms end up, whether knowingly or not, "boosting China’s national image and soft power."
What’s even more absurd is the report’s attempt to link this trend to Trump-era America. It claims some young Americans, frustrated by their own country’s realities, have turned their curiosity toward China, even joking about "learning Chinese to escape a declining America."
Events like nearly half a million users flocking to the Chinese app RedNote to vent after TikTok’s U.S. ban, or Chinese products such as the toy LaBubu sparking consumer demand in the West, are interpreted as deliberate Chinese efforts to "craft a contrasting narrative," painting the United States as a "dystopian society" weighed down by poverty and cultural decay caused by capitalism.
Western Media’s Suspicion and Double Standards
Reading The Daily Telegraph's article reveals its "pre-set script for interviews":
If you come to China, you must talk politics and geopolitical tensions—otherwise you’re accused of "deliberately avoiding controversy."
You can’t simply enjoy the food and culture, or you’re "fooled by appearances."
Your videos can’t be too light-hearted or happy, because with Western governments constantly warning about the "China threat," any joyful content must be a "carefully staged facade."
To be blunt, the "qualified" Western visitor they expect isn’t here to explore but to "complete political critique assignments." Yet a British blogger told the truth: "I have no interest in Chinese politics—I’m just here for the noodles."
A laughable double standard at its core. For years, Chinese people learning English, enjoying Hollywood movies, drinking coffee, and eating steak were seen through a Western lens as "embracing universal values" and "modernization," even praised as "progress." But when the roles reverse—Western youth voluntarily learning Chinese, loving Chinese food, and showing interest in China’s technology and urban life—they are immediately suspected of ulterior motives, scrutinized as "naively misled."
From hailing "nurturing and enlightening" flowing from West to East, to condemning "malicious infiltration" going from East to West. This measurement of cultural appeal is overly elastic.
Authentic Cultural Exchange vs Political Narratives
Ultimately, the collective "cracking" by certain media outlets reveals their deep anxiety over losing their monopoly on discourse. As China eases visa restrictions and platforms like TikTok and RedNote allow young people worldwide to bypass traditional media filters, they can see a complex, diverse, and vibrant real China with their own eyes.
The outdated narrative that has portrayed China simply as a "threat" or "misfit" for decades suddenly feels obsolete. These media fail to grasp that young people might genuinely find spicy hotpot delicious, Chongqing’s night skyline impressive, and China’s e-commerce logistics astonishingly fast.
This kind of authentic, personal identification is the toughest and most resistant form of cultural communication to "orchestrate."
This creates a striking modern paradox: on one side, countless ordinary individuals instinctively chase rich life experiences, naturally expressing admiration and curiosity through food, technology, and cityscapes; on the opposite side, certain opinion elites desperately wield the blunt instrument of "political propaganda," trying to label any positive portrayal outside their predefined narrative as "abnormal."
A simple truth: when you are used to boxing others into fixed demonized roles, any genuine glimpse of everyday life looks like a subversive "threat."
Beacon Institute
** 博客文章文責自負,不代表本公司立場 **
Paris's mercury shot up like a rocket with no brakes in June, blowing past 44°C. The Louvre cut its opening hours and the Eiffel Tower baked in the heat. More than 3,000 primary and secondary schools were forced to close.
Meanwhile, at Paris's funeral homes, phones rang every few minutes, with each caller asking the same question: "Is there any space left for another body?"
Funeral home director Zouhaeir Hertelli's phone would not stop ringing. "We have no solution to offer them," he said, "We're completely full." To free up space, he had to transport some bodies to Chartres, 80 kilometers away. He even applied to the government for permission to place temporary refrigerated containers outside the funeral home. That application is still under review.
The numbers from France's public health agency are even more disheartening. In just three days, from June 23 to 25, excess deaths nationwide totaled around 1,000. June 23 set a new record for the highest temperature since France began keeping weather records, surpassing even the 2003 heatwave of the century that killed 15,000 people.
It was at this exact moment that France's Minister for Ecological Transition, Monique Barbut, stepped forward.
Barbut spoke publicly at the Paris Air Quality Monitoring Center on June 26. She said she was "horrified" to hear public calls for widespread air conditioning. Air conditioning, she argued, was never a fundamental solution to the climate crisis. Mass installation of AC units could neither curb forest fires nor save wildlife populations. "This is not adaption to global warming," she said, "this is an emergency measure."
Her words landed on the French public like a bucket of cold water poured over their heads in 40-degree heat. Well, except the water was scalding hot.
Public fury ignited instantly. Fewer than 25% of French households have air conditioning. Public schools have AC coverage below 7%, and countless nursing homes and community clinics still lack even basic cooling equipment. Emergency room temperatures have long hovered near 40°C, leaving critically ill patients with no way to recover safely. For elderly people living alone, low-income families, and tenants crammed into old Haussmann-era buildings, air conditioning isn't a luxury. It's the last line of defense keeping them alive.
But the real spectacle was yet to come.
Members of the public went digging and found that the government office buildings housing Minister Barbut's office, the Séquoia Tower and La Défense's Grande Arche, were already fully equipped with central air conditioning. She lectured at climate summits about carbon-neutral emissions targets from a cooled office. At the same time, she called ordinary citizens' desire for air conditioning "horrifying". She claimed AC was merely an "emergency measure" rather than a long-term adaptation strategy, yet let her own cool breeze become an everyday fixture.
A textbook definition of a "double standard." Long-term ecological goals are meant to constrain ordinary people, while immediate comfort is reserved for oneself.
The public backlash came fast and hard. Within just two days, France's health authorities scrambled to finalize a procurement plan, allocating 30,000 air conditioning units on a priority basis to public hospitals, nursing homes, and schools. Paris's city government simultaneously procured over a thousand cooling units. This policy U-turn resembled an actor caught off guard, frantically fixing their makeup after being slapped on stage. Except the price of this particular performance was over a thousand lives already lost.
The absurdity of this whole episode isn't that environmental ideals are inherently wrong. The arguments from France's Green Party and left-wing camp aren't entirely without merit. Old buildings have poor insulation, AC condenser units worsen the urban heat island effect, and cooling cities requires ecological solutions rather than simply relying on electric cooling. These are all genuine technical challenges.
The problem arises when "long-term planning" is invoked to dismiss the most urgent needs of ordinary people right now. That's when environmentalism stops being public policy and becomes class rhetoric instead.
The long-standing "consensus" in French society, that urban cooling should rely on ecological retrofitting rather than air conditioning, is at its core a consensus of the propertied class. Homeowners who can afford exterior wall insulation upgrades, families with the resources to escape to summer retreats, and officials with the power to enjoy central air conditioning in their offices can of course afford to speak elegantly about "ecological adaptation."
But for tenants crammed into uninsulated old stone buildings, elderly people living alone in retirement, or medical staff toughing it out in emergency rooms with nothing but reflective sun shields and aging fans, the phrase "long-term planning" is just another way of saying, "you'll just have to keep enduring it."
This is the truth behind the "cooling class." Cool air has a class hierarchy, and so does environmentalism.
Nearly 15,000 people in France died from heat-related causes in the 2003 heatwave, most of them elderly people living alone. The government at the time was criticized for its sluggish response and disregard for the vulnerable. Twenty-three years later, history has repeated itself almost exactly. The only difference is that the government's excuse has been upgraded from "negligence" to "environmentalism." From funeral homes overflowing to a minister's air-conditioned office, from 1,000 excess deaths to air conditioning being called "shocking," the distance between these two realities is merely a few floors' worth of height. Yet it separates two entirely different Frances.
The cool breeze still flows through Minister Barbut's office. Meanwhile, at the Paris funeral home, Hertelli is still waiting for approval on that refrigerated container. "Imagine your father's or mother's body has begun to decompose," he said, "and we're unable to take care of it, and we have no solution to offer them."
Perhaps that sentence is the most honest confession to emerge from this entire heatwave. When environmental slogans are used to mask governance failures, and when long-term planning is used to dodge questions of life and death happening right now, so-called "climate adaptation" becomes just another sophisticated way of shirking responsibility.
The real double standard was never as simple as "saying one thing and doing another." It's a system that grants some people the permanent right to talk about "the future," while ensuring others never get to see "the present."
Paris's summer still has a long way to go. But for some, there won't be a next summer.
