Gen Z's fascination with China is about their disillusionment with capitalism

Reed Adams' interest in China started on Google Maps.

"I really like infrastructure," said Adams, 20, a part-time travel content creator. "I would just spend time on Google Maps and see these huge new mega-projects in the Chinese countryside — huge towers and everything — and I sort of fell down that rabbit hole of looking at how China has developed."

At the time, Adams was 13. It wasn't until 2025 that he'd saved enough money from working at Walmart and finally got to see China for himself. He shared his opinions on how it stacks up against the West on TikTok.

"Western media will just tell you everything you see about China is propaganda because they don't want to admit how far we've fallen," Adams said in a video posted in October about his 10-day trip to Chengdu, Chongqing, and Shanghai.

The video, which has racked up more than 4 million views, is just one example of how social media visibility into China has helped pique interest among some young Americans at a time when their views of capitalism are changing. Other top videos with hundreds of thousands of likes each take viewers on a tour of one family's $1,000-a-month, three-bedroom apartment in Shenzhen, extol a cheaper, safer lifestyle for a couple in Shanghai, and make the case for an "introvert's paradise" provided by tech-enabled, no-contact transactions.

Gen Zers aren't totally blinded by the clean streets and drone-delivered lunches they see on their phones. Ally, a 22-year-old from New York who studied abroad in Shanghai in 2025, said that though she enjoyed traveling on China's rail network and the ease of cashless payments, China's lack of First Amendment protections and its youth unemployment crisis can't be ignored.

Also, she added, "I'm not there to work 996 — 9 a.m. to 9 p.m., 6 days a week," referring to a hustle-culture trend adopted by some youth in China. Other young people in China are broke, burned out, and have given up on productivity in a trend known as "lying flat."

Christian Nemeth, a 26-year-old content creator from Nevada who now lives in Chengdu, told Business Insider that life in China isn't without its hurdles.

"China may seem glitz and glam, but there is a side of getting used to it," Nemeth told Business Insider. Adjusting to the Chinese government's censorship, for example, was one of the biggest challenges.

"Sometimes it'll shock me what some of my friends know and what they know about it," he said, citing his Chinese friends' hazy knowledge of the September 11, 2001, attacks on the World Trade Center as an example.

Gen Zers in the US grew up with a version of capitalism that provided access to cheap goods from China, while seeing rising costs for American-made goods and stagnating infrastructure development at home. Those focused on China are less interested in it as the US's economic foil and more interested in its traditional medical practices, social media platforms, and what it can show the US about investing in technology and infrastructure to improve citizens' lives.

Nemeth said that despite China's censorship, he has little desire to return to the States. In his view, China bested the US in healthcare, convenience, and travel.

"I've been here eight months, and I don't look back. I'll probably stay here for as long as I can," he said.

Gen Zers are picking and choosing pieces of China's culture and economy to idealize as their views of Western capitalism change. According to the latest Harvard Youth Poll from fall 2025, 39% of 18- to 29-year-olds said they support capitalism, down from 45% in 2020.

Gen Z is also far less likely than their parents and grandparents to call China an enemy. Nineteen percent of those aged 18 to 29 hold this view, compared with 40% of those aged 50 to 64 and 47% of those aged 65 and older, a 2025 Pew Research study found.

Americans have held mostly unfavorable views of China since 1990, according to Gallup polling, and China has long been perceived as the US's main economic adversary. At the same time, its manufacturing power has been central to Americans' access to cheap goods, including clothing, toys, and electronics.

Meanwhile, high-tech sectors like software, social media, and electric vehicles now show that "Made in China" is no longer synonymous with low-quality and copycat goods, thanks to state investments in those industries.

"We don't have their electric cars here yet, but as soon as we do, people are probably going to view the Chinese auto industry differently," Mark Giordano, a professor and vice dean at Georgetown University's School of Foreign Service, told Business Insider. "TikTok is Chinese, and there are things that are globally competitive culturally," he added, citing appliances like refrigerators.

China's innovation doesn't stop with consumer products. The country's mega-engineering projects include the world's longest subway network, highest bridge, and most powerful dam. Young Americans like Adams are taking note.He said there's been talk of extending rail service to his hometown of Dubuque, Iowa, for 20 years, but it hasn't happened.

"The Americans are embracing China Modern," said Ying Zhu, a visiting professor at the Pratt Institute and the author of "Hollywood in China: Behind the Scenes of the World's Largest Movie Market." She said that"modern China" is "efficient in adopting advanced technology and less chaotic in policy implementation."

Tiffany Huang, a 23-year-old from Florida who has visited China throughout her life to see extended family in rural Fujian, said she was struck by how much the region changed in a period of five years. Pre-pandemic, she and her siblings used to "mourn" going to China because it was so undeveloped. Between 2019 and 2024, however, she was struck by how quickly high-rise apartment buildings and office towers sprang up.

"All of a sudden," she said, "you see these large, large skyscrapers starting to appear where there's typically just grass and just cows and farms."

Post-pandemic, she's also been captivated by the luxe experience — complete with food service — on a bullet train from Shanghai to Fuzhou. Ally, the New York Gen Zer who studied in China, also mentioned the sleek travel experience offered on China's intercity railway system, which she felt was more tech-forward than US trains.

"It's like Amtrak but better because of how nice the station looks in general — like two floors tall with lots of food options, and I've heard you can order delivery while you're on the train," she said.

Huang was also impressed by DiDi, China's version of Uber, for its $5 30-minute rides between cities, and the safety she felt walking home at night.

"This might be a controversial take, but since there's so much CCTV monitoring all around China, there is a very low crime rate," Huang said. "I just felt very safe, especially as a woman going out at night, when I'm out at 12 a.m. exploring the city or just taking a walk."

Huang, Nemeth, and Adams all cited the streamer Darren Watkins, Jr., known as Speed or IShowSpeed, as a primary influence on China's popularity boom with Gen Z. Watkins toured China for two weeks in April 2025 and livestreamed the trip to tens of millions of subscribers.

"Chat, this is Cyber City right here. Damn! This city is like, not even human," Watkins said in one video from the trip, while admiring the Chongqing skyline. "Chat, should I move to China?"

Chinese cultural practices are also having a moment, including elements of traditional medicine and clothing, in a trend known as Chinamaxxing. On TikTok, there's growing interest in what life is like in China, including a type of video in which users film themselves preparing Cantonese chicken or drinking hot water in the morning to aid in digestion and skincare. Captions read, "You met me at a very Chinese time in my life."

Creator Sherry Zhu, 23, told Business Insider that engagement with her videos skyrocketed after she started posting about Chinese culture. Her follower count ballooned and today is over 745,000 — a large portion of which she says are non-Asian Americans.

"There is sort of an interest in traditional Chinese medicine, traditional food," Zhu said. She says her first viral TikTok post was a set of photos she took wearing hanfu, a traditional Chinese dress. "In the comments, people were asking me, 'What is this style of dress called? Where did you take these photos?' I was like, well, if everyone's so curious about my culture, I'll just keep posting about my culture."

US consumer interest in traditional Chinese medicine, which has been slowly gaining steam for a few decades, reached a two-decade high in December 2025, according to Google Trends data.

Then there's the platform that's facilitated much of this idealization, China's fiercely defended export, TikTok. When Americans feared they'd lose access to the app ahead of an impending sale or ban, the Chinese alternative, RedNote, soared to the top of Apple's App Store. Some Americans joked about hand-delivering personal data to the Chinese government so the US couldn't say it was being stolen — a reaction that signaled American dedication to TikTok, willingness to trust a Chinese company, and lack of enthusiasm for the billionaires rumored to be buying TikTok at the time.

"People can oddly separate, or compartmentalize, 'OK, China's got this problem, but I want to use TikTok,'" Giordano said. He said they're not thinking about buying Chinese products as a political act; they just want the product with the best value.

While young Americans may not have a complete grasp of the complexities of China's economic system, Giordano said they are correct to deconstruct some of the US's messaging on Chinese communism. He said it's a "mistake" to assume that "because China is all state-controlled, their stuff will be crap forever and they can't possibly do anything but copy."

Despite state intervention in industry, he said, "there's a really vibrant creative class that is working hard to make good products that people want to buy."

Zhu, the author and professor, is skeptical that the answer to Gen Z's disillusionment with US capitalism can really be found in China.

"If that's the case, then the American Gen Z are looking in the wrong place, as their contemporaries in China are equally burnt out and disillusioned," she said.

"What China has now is a state capitalism, which the US increasingly resembles," she said, referencing President Donald Trump's recent moves to have the government buy stakes in companies. "Capitalism is capitalism, either the US state or the Chinese state."

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