La humillación que Putin quiso evitar en Moscú, le llega hoy en su ciudad natal, San Peterburgo ante la presencia de delegaciones de 76 países y territorios que acuden a su Foro Económico Internacional. La terminal petrolera de la ciudad arde alcanzada por drones ucranianos
Alex Lo in SCMP on the rising “China-maxxing” phenomenon among young Westerners, and on why it isn’t really about TikTok aesthetics. It’s about a generation that has watched the West tear off its mask in Gaza, in Iran, in the Caribbean, in ICE detention facilities, and concluded that the social-moral-ideological hierarchy it grew up being told to take for granted does not actually exist.
The comparison the younger generation is making isn’t between China and some imaginary frictionless Western liberal democracy. It’s between China and the West we can actually see. A West that has armed, financed and politically protected a genocide that has killed more than 75,000 people. A West whose largest power runs over 240 immigration detention camps – scholars are now calling them concentration camps.
The China-bashing era required two things: that the West retain its status at the top of an ethical hierarchy, and that audiences keep buying that narrative. Neither survives Gaza. Neither survives the war on Iran. The generational shift “China-maxxing” describes is, fundamentally, the moment a generation has realised it was sold an account of the world that wasn’t true.