A video of a dancing cat, a review of a face cream — and then suddenly Alice Weidel appears, in slow motion, filtered, and with a wry smile and background music.
Canan Kus and Xiaolu Zhang are based at the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation’s Beijing Office.
Fan videos like this are not uncommon on Xiaohongshu, one of China’s most popular social media platforms. The parliamentary group leader for the far-right Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) is garnering attention on the country’s social networks — not as an object of loathing, but as a cult figure.
Weidel’s viral online fame in China did not emerge overnight. Accounts featuring her Bundestag speeches with Chinese subtitles began appearing years ago. Her popularity surged during the latest Bundestag election campaign. The narrative is always the same: “Strong woman defies the establishment.” In the digital world, Weidel has earned the nickname Iron Lady, a nod to Margaret Thatcher, but also an idealized image of a calm, resolute woman who goes against the grain.
It quickly becomes apparent that these videos are primarily pop-cultural projections. They bear a striking stylistic resemblance to fan videos of actors and musicians in East Asia, and that is no coincidence.
Alice Weidel’s biography helps explain these projections: she has lived in China, speaks the language, and wrote her doctorate on the Chinese pension system. This makes her popular among her Chinese fans as “a German who understands us”. Some even describe her as “virtuous”, a Confucian quality associated with moral integrity and sincerity. The fact that this term is written using the same character as the word for Germany is sometimes noted with a wink.
However, this framework often overlooks the fact that Weidel is a leading figure on Germany’s far right and that her party systematically incites hatred against minorities and promotes an authoritarian worldview. Most of Weidel’s Chinese fans are not typical right-wingers; many are neither politically organized nor ideologically driven. They are individuals who follow hashtags, share memes, and post clips. Yet based on their profiles, their social background is revealing: they are mostly urban, middle-class, educated, internationally mobile, and socially secure.
Even in China, this group includes right-wing activists for whom Weidel is not just a pop-cultural icon but a standard bearer in the culture war. This attitude is not unique to China — it is part of a global digital network in which predominantly male, conservative, and far-right communities connect across borders. Forums, Telegram channels, and comment sections unite those who see themselves as opposing an alleged “woke majority”. Migration, gender debates, and climate policy are viewed as intrusive, disruptive, and “modern”. Their figureheads often cite Elon Musk, Jordan Peterson, or Alice Weidel. This global right — whether in Germany, the US, South Korea, or China — is united less by a cohesive ideology than by a shared sense of grievance: the feeling of being constantly lectured, restricted, or dismissed.
The Weidel Vibe
So how do representatives of the international Right end up in Chinese timelines? It rarely happens through official media, but rather through a loose digital infrastructure. Content is downloaded from YouTube, X, or Telegram, translated, aestheticized, and re-uploaded onto Chinese platforms. Little of the political content remains, but much of the style does.
The fact that Alice Weidel and the AfD are gaining traction on Chinese social media does not necessarily mean that their ideology is being embraced. Instead, there are two distinct trends that overlap and impact how they are received online: on one hand, Weidel is portrayed as a pop-cultural icon, styled with aesthetic filters and used as a blank screen for other people’s projections. This interpretation often overlooks her actual message, relying instead on image, pose, and soundtrack.
On the other hand, there is a politically motivated reception: individual actors — such as nationalist culture warriors, tech-savvy influencers, or Chinese returnees from abroad — consciously adopt and spread right-wing narratives from the West, adapting terms like “woke ideology” or “dictatorship of opinion” to the Chinese context. In this sphere, Weidel is not just a symbol but also a political figure whose messages are absorbed and integrated into anti-liberal debates.
Because these two ways of engaging with her appear visually indistinguishable in digital spaces, they can seem like a single, homogeneous mass from the outside. Yet what looks like a unified trend comes from very different sources.
The AfD’s image as a supposedly China-friendly actor stems from loosely connected media spaces in both countries.
Closer inspection reveals a complex interplay, rather than a convergence, between an authoritarian state and a right-wing populist party. China views itself as a nation constantly subjected to Western criticism, despite — or because of — its economic rise. The AfD, meanwhile, is a significant but largely powerless opposition party that casts itself as a perpetual victim. These are two fundamentally different self-images with little in common, yet they collide in the logic of digital visibility. Algorithmic amplification fuels an endless loop of misunderstanding: fan montages, subtitles, and TikTok soundtracks. What was originally conceived as a rejection of Western criticism morphs into apparent proximity through algorithms. This is why we should be wary of assuming a strategic alignment of political ideologies based on enthusiasm for individual figures or narratives on social media.
Thus, Chinese reactions to Weidel and similar figures — beyond the previously mentioned culture-war cheerleaders — are not an expression of a unified or state-controlled political camp. Rather, they reflect a digitally fragmented, multifaceted society in which many users engage with global issues independently.
Yet the engagement with figures like Weidel also reflects a desire for alternatives to the West’s moral framework, which many in China see less as a principled stance and more as arrogance. Western voices, including those on the Left, often get stuck in moralistic language and a condescending tone, and when they talk about China, their commentary is particularly critical. This shows that Weidel’s fan culture represents not just a Chinese error but also a Western or a German one.
The AfD’s Opportunistic Approach to China
While Weidel’s popularity stems from digital aesthetics and cultural projections, the case of AfD MEP Maximilian Krah shows how foreign policy and populist strategies can be intertwined. Krah has long positioned himself as “China-friendly” and criticized the German government’s China policy. Yet he is now facing serious allegations, including investigations for suspected bribery. Specifically, it is a matter of taking payments from circles tied to espionage — including one of his own staff members, who was detained on suspicion of spying for China.
This scandal highlights how some AfD figures exploit China’s geopolitical role for domestic political gain, seemingly undeterred by criminal connections. For Krah, it is not about Chinese policy but about using China as a symbol of an alternative order in opposition to the West’s “values-based” foreign policy. The party does not have a coherent China strategy and instead cherry-picks motifs that serve its domestic agenda. It aims to appear pragmatic, using real geopolitical tensions to fuel its populist narrative. The AfD’s suggestion that Beijing is part of its own culture war obviously reflects the party’s sheer arrogance.
The AfD’s image as a supposedly China-friendly actor stems from loosely connected media spaces in both countries. Individuals, fans, diaspora voices, TikTok videos, and subtitled Bundestag speeches: in both the German and the Chinese social media landscapes, informal networks and algorithms shape the AfD’s image. This lack of context creates room for interpretation, enabling the AfD to position itself as a “sensible alternative” to the German government’s China policy, which often seems moralizing yet lacks real engagement. Indeed, Western discourse often remains steeped in arrogance. What’s sold at home as a moral compass often feels like blunt rejection abroad.
If democratic and progressive politics cannot find a way to be clear, engaging, and insightful, they lose credibility. Those who fear losing control of the narrative and instinctively push back against engagement end up ceding the stage to the AfD. The German left has also struggled to develop a foreign policy language to engage with countries like China in a nuanced way that avoids simplistic friend-or-foe thinking.
Perhaps that is the real bridge: not one between the AfD and China, but between everyone striving to understand global politics without immediately falling into the trap of hegemonic self-assurance. The task for leftist politics in the twenty-first century is not to draw dividing lines, but to build connections — without pandering or arrogance.
This article first appeared in nd.Aktuell in collaboration with the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation. Translated by Diego Otero and Joseph Keady for Gegensatz Translation Collective.