Abstract

The global phenomenon of "Chinamaxxing" – a viral trend in which non-Chinese social media users adopt Chinese habits, aesthetics, and lifestyles – has attracted considerable popular and journalistic attention. Yet existing academic treatments remain theoretically underdeveloped, confined to soft-power discourse, cultural studies frames, or descriptive media analysis. The lecture proposes a more precise, analytically rigorous account grounded in Niklas Luhmann's systems theory. The central thesis is twofold. First, that Chinamaxxing succeeds as global communication precisely where official Chinese state media fails – not due to superior production quality, but due to a structural feature: it operates natively within the mass media system's own code (information/non-information, entertainment program), whereas state propaganda is produced by the political system and therefore registers as politically coded – and thus, in Luhmann's terms, as non-information – the moment it appears. Second, that this asymmetry is not a correctable deficiency but a structural impossibility: the political system cannot produce communications that are simultaneously unambiguous enough to remain political and ambiguous enough to succeed as mass media entertainment.

About the Speaker

Dr. Markus G. T. Heidingsfelder is an Associate Professor of Media and Communication at UIC (Beijing Normal-Hong Kong Baptist University), holding a summa cum laude PhD from LMU Munich. His academic career spans institutions across Germany, Pakistan, and Malaysia. A prolific scholar in systems theory and media, his recent book publications include Media Realities—A West-Eastern Divan (Routledge, 2025), which explores global truth and perception, and Probat experiri (LIT, 2024), a tribute to sociologist Peter Fuchs. Other recent titles include The Piracy Years (2023), investigating internet file sharing, and Die Lehre vom Saint Délire (2022), a conversation on the meaning of delusion.

Visitor Arrangement

Public visitors are welcome to attend the seminar. Please register in advance via https://forms.gle/zNWdF4ndUQBiuq6B7 RSVP by 16 April 2026 17:00.

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