AfD and social media in China | Alice Weidel on Xiaohongshu

A video with a dancing cat, a review of a face cream – and then suddenly Alice Weidel, in slow motion, with a filter, a crooked smile, and music. Indeed, one often stumbles upon such fan videos on Xiaohongshu, one of the most popular social media platforms in China. The AfD parliamentary group leader is receiving attention on the country's social media – not as a hate figure, but as a cult figure.

Weidel's viral career in China didn't begin overnight. The first accounts featuring her Bundestag speeches, complete with Chinese subtitles, appeared several years ago. However, the reception only really gained momentum during the recent federal election campaign. The narrative is always the same: "Strong woman defies the establishment." Within the digital sphere, Weidel has since earned the nickname "Iron Lady," a reference to Margaret Thatcher, but also to the idealized image of the cool, determined woman who swims against the tide.

It's quickly apparent that these videos are primarily pop-cultural projections. It's no coincidence that they're stylistically similar to the fan videos published in East Asia about actors and musicians.

Alice Weidel's ability to project her image is due to her biography: She lived in China, speaks the local language, and wrote her doctorate on the Chinese pension system. This makes her popular with her Chinese fans as "a German who understands us." Some commentators even associate her with "virtue," a Confucian term for moral integrity and uprightness. The fact that the same character appears in the word "Germany" is sometimes taken up with a wink.

The fact that Weidel is a central figure of the extreme right in Germany, that her party systematically incites hatred against minorities and advocates a right-wing authoritarian worldview, is often overlooked in this perception. Most of Weidel's Chinese fans are not traditional right-wingers. Many of them are neither politically organized nor ideologically entrenched. They are individuals who follow hashtags, forward memes, and share clips. But their social background, based on their profiles, is quite revealing: They are predominantly members of the urban middle class, with education, international mobility, and social security.

There are certainly right-wing activists in this group, even in China. For them, Weidel is not just a pop-cultural symbol, but a standard-bearer of the culture war. This attitude is not a specifically Chinese phenomenon, but rather part of a digital constellation in which predominantly male-dominated conservative and right-wing radical milieus exchange ideas across national borders. Those who see themselves as the opposition to the supposedly "woke majority" meet in forums, Telegram channels, and comment sections. Migration, gender debates, climate policy – ​​all of these are considered intrusive, disruptive, and "newfangled" here. The spokespeople are people who refer to Elon Musk, Jordan Peterson, or even Alice Weidel. This global right – whether in Germany, the USA, South Korea, or China – is united less by a coherent ideology than by a shared perception: namely, the feeling of constantly being lectured, restricted, or not taken seriously.

The Weidel Vibe

But how do representatives of the international right wing get into Chinese timelines? The route rarely leads through official media, but rather through a loose, digital infrastructure. Content is downloaded from YouTube, X, or Telegram, translated, aestheticized, and re-uploaded to Chinese platforms. Little of the political content remains, but much of the style.

The increasing visibility of Alice Weidel and the AfD on the Chinese internet is not, in itself, proof of an ideological embrace of their positions. Rather, two very different currents overlap in digital reception: On the one hand, there is the pop-cultural staging of Weidel as an aesthetically filtered figure and projection surface. This reading often elides content and functions primarily through image, posture, and soundtrack.

However, there is also a politically motivated reception: Individual actors—such as nationalist cultural warriors, tech-oriented influencers, or Chinese returning from abroad—consciously receive and disseminate right-wing narratives from the West, adapting terms like "woke ideology" or "dictatorship of opinion" and translating them into the Chinese context. In this sphere, Weidel is not only a symbol but also a political figure whose messages are taken up and fed into anti-liberal debates.

Precisely because both reception modes in digital spaces are visually almost indistinguishable, the outside view easily creates the impression of a homogenous mass. However, what appears to be a common trend stems from very different sources.

A closer look reveals a nuanced interplay, rather than a convergence between an authoritarian state and a right-wing populist party. China sees itself as a country that is constantly criticized by the West despite – or because of – its economic rise. The AfD, on the other hand, is a relevant but largely powerless opposition party that portrays itself as a perpetual victim. Two fundamentally different self-images that have little to do with each other and yet collide in the logic of digital visibility. Algorithmic amplification creates a misunderstanding on an endless loop: fan montages, subtitles, TikTok soundtracks. What was originally intended as a demarcation from Western criticism is transformed by the algorithm into apparent proximity. Therefore, we should be cautious about hastily concluding a strategic convergence between political ideologies from enthusiasm for individual people or narratives on social media.

And so, beyond the aforementioned claque of the culture war, the Chinese reactions to Weidel and Co. are not an expression of a unified or even state-controlled political camp. Rather, they reflect a digitally fragmented, multi-voiced society in which many users engage independently with global issues.

However, the debate about figures like Weidel also reveals a need for alternatives to the moral superstructure of the West, which in many Chinese contexts is perceived less as a stance than as hubris. After all, Western voices, including those on the left, often remain trapped in moralistic language and a didactic tone, and when they speak about China, it's primarily about making accusations. This shows that the fan culture surrounding Weidel is not a purely Chinese failure, but also a Western or German one.

Instrumental China policy of the AfD

While Weidel's popularity is fueled by digital aesthetics and cultural projections, the case of AfD MEP Maximilian Krah demonstrates how foreign policy interests and populist strategies can intertwine. For years, Krah has portrayed himself as "pro-China" and criticized the German government's China policy. But now he himself is the focus of serious allegations; he is even under investigation on suspicion of bribery. These involve payments from circles associated with espionage activities—including a member of Krah's team who was arrested on suspicion of espionage for China.

This affair sheds light on how individual AfD representatives are attempting to exploit China's geopolitical role to gain domestic political ground – and apparently do not even shy away from criminal contacts in the process. Krah is not concerned with Chinese politics, but rather with the function that China is supposed to play in the AfD's domestic political struggle: as a symbol of a different order, directed against the "values-based" foreign policy of the West. The party does not pursue a coherent China strategy, but rather selectively uses those motifs that can be exploited domestically. It seeks to present itself as a pragmatic force and uses real geopolitical tensions as fuel for its populist agenda. The AfD's suggestion that Beijing is part of its own culturally combative allotment is obviously driven by great arrogance.

The AfD's image as a supposedly pro-China force is thus the product of a loosely converging media public on both sides. Individuals, fans, diaspora voices, TikTok videos, commented speeches in the Bundestag: Both in Germany and in the Chinese social media landscape, it is loose networks and algorithmic dynamics that shape the AfD's image. It is precisely this lack of context that opens up room for interpretation: The AfD can present itself as a "sensible alternative" to the German government's China policy, which appears with a raised finger but makes few concrete offers of dialogue. And indeed, Western discourse all too often persists in moral hubris. But what is sold domestically as a moral compass often appears externally like rigid refusal.

If democratic and progressive politics fails to find a form that is explanatory, inviting, and clear, credibility loses its resonance. Those who fear losing their own interpretive authority and therefore reflexively reject any rapprochement are ceding the stage to the AfD. The German Left, too, has so far developed little foreign policy vocabulary to engage in nuanced dialogue with states like China without reflexively falling into friend-enemy stereotypes.

Perhaps this is the real bridge: not between the AfD and China, but between all those actors who want to understand how global politics works without immediately falling into the trap of hegemonic self-affirmation. Because the task of left-wing politics in the 21st century is not demarcation, but connectivity without pandering and arrogance.

Canan Kus and Xiaolu Zhang work in the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation office in the Chinese capital Beijing