No.161588
Ep. 37: The Compatible Left in the Era of CHINAMAXXING w/ Grayson & Sungross (@RTSG_Main)
by Strait Talk with Xiangyu
Over the last decade, more and more people in the west have started calling themselves socialist, communist, and even Marxist-Leninist. In more recent years, we've also seen the rise of "CHINAMAXXING," with growing numbers of young Westerners becoming curious about China after direct exposure through platforms like Xiaohongshu (Red Note), where they're interacting with ordinary Chinese people online.
But what exactly are people becoming "pro-China" toward?
In this episode of STXY, I'm joined by Grayson from Infrared and Sungross from @RTSG_Main to discuss the rise of what we call the compatible left, a form of Western leftism that adopts radical aesthetics and sometimes anti-imperialist language while remaining fully compatible with mainstream US political and foreign policy structures.
We talk about how socialism and communism in the West have increasingly been redefined through the lens of radical liberalism, and how many self-described "pro-China" leftists often project an imaginary version of China that conforms more to Western progressive sensibilities than to China as it actually exists.
We also discuss how China has become a proxy object in American political discourse, with both the right and the left turning China into whatever they need it to be for their own domestic narratives. For some, China is an authoritarian threat. For others, it becomes a fantasy woke utopia. In both cases, China itself often becomes secondary to American political identity and culture war dynamics.
As case studies, we examine Hasan Piker and Kat Abughazaleh. Hasan recently visited China during the height of the CHINAMAXXING trend and publicly praised many aspects of the country while livestreaming here, helping normalize direct exposure to China among younger Western audiences. But despite presenting himself as anti-establishment, socialist, and now a "friend" of China, he returns to the United States and throws his support behind figures like Kat Abughazaleh, whose foreign policy positions on China are fully aligned with mainstream US strategic interests and, in some cases, even more hawkish than establishment Republicans and Democrats.
We explore what this contradiction reveals about the modern Western left, why so many "anti-imperialists" remain structurally embedded within empire, and how radical political language can be absorbed into systems that ultimately reproduce the same geopolitical outcomes.
Is the western left capable of developing an independent understanding of China and foreign policy at all, or is it trapped within the boundaries of American political culture regardless of rhetoric? Tune in to find out!