A mother-and-son duo’s animated 3D film earned just 342 yuan ($US50) on opening day. Then its crude visuals turned it into a viral success, propelling it into the top ten of the year’s domestic animated releases. A meaningless ‘miracle’ or sign of shifting cultural sentiments? An explainer.

Something extraordinary has happened in Chinese cinemas this month. A tiny animated film about a yellow cow on a dreamlike adventure opened in a few hundred Chinese theaters on August 5, 2026, with zero promotion and no trailer. On its first day, the movie’s box office revenue totaled just 342 yuan (US$50).

Nobody could have expected that this microbudget indie movie, initially playing to empty seats, would become a nationwide viral hit—not because people thought it was good, but because they found it so aesthetically ugly.

The 86-minute 3D animation is titled Niu Lai (牛来, literally “Here Comes the Cow/The Cow Comes”). It was produced by just two people from Dalian: 34-year-old Xin Yumeng (信雨萌) and his mother, Sun Lifang (孙丽芳). The pair spent five years making it.

The plot follows a young calf named Niu Lai, who is too afraid to stand. In his dreams, he befriends a skylark and a young leopard on a sometimes-scary adventure, during which he grows up, loses his mother in a wolf attack, and eventually wakes up with new life lessons.

Despite being complete newcomers to the film industry, Xin and his mother handled everything themselves, from directing and writing to animation, voice acting, and music—theirs were the only two names in the end credits.

They registered the script in 2021 and, after passing the content review, received a public-screening permit in 2024. The narrative contained no apparent sensitivities, and all the paperwork was in order. A film distributor they knew reportedly helped them secure screenings at a few hundred cinemas (even though, after seeing the film’s quality, he had advised them against a theatrical release).

Around August 13-14, the movie went viral when a few netizens who saw it shared their disbelief at the primitive visuals, which contrasted sharply with the…

Over the past few weeks, a noteworthy amount of AI-related news has been trending on Chinese social media, which is reflected in this week’s edition.

Now that AI has entered every corner of media consumption and online life, related discussions seem to be reaching a new peak. While well-produced AI dramas are receiving more praise, low-effort AI slop is flooding video feeds and increasingly being used to stir controversy and generate clicks, fueling prejudice, hate, and cyber-nationalism. More about that further down in this newsletter.

🗞️ QUICK SCROLLS

🎬 A new AI-generated micro-drama has become all the rage on Chinese social media. While earlier AI dramas were criticized for being sloppy and repetitive, Laid-Off Girl (被裁掉的女孩) is praised for its quality and appealing protagonist, Fang Taozi (方桃子), a small-town woman pursuing her dream of becoming a model in Paris. She is so believable that viewers almost forget they are not watching a live-action production. This marks a real step up in quality for the industry, raising the bar for others. (If you want to get a taste of what it looks like, here’s a YouTube link).

Stills from the popular micro AI drama Laid-Off Girl (被裁掉的女孩).

📺 China’s national TV has now also aired its very first AI drama. While AI dramas mostly belonged to the realm of unofficial short-form online productions, the phenomenon has now made the leap to longer productions broadcast on national satellite television. Anhui TV is airing the Ming-dynasty drama The Tale of Peach Blossom Pool (桃花潭记), promoted as China’s first fully AI-produced medium-length drama centered on cultural heritage.

📱 China’s cheap & easy SIM-card era has ended. There was a time when you could get a SIM at any street corner in a Chinese city. That changed over a decade ago when real-name registration became strictly enforced. Now, as of 1 August, China Mobile, China Telecom and China Unicom will sell cards online only through their own apps and websites, cutting off all third-party internet sellers who have been the go-to source for cheap data plans. The move is meant to curb third-party SIM cards ending up in grey-market chains, being used for bulk account registration and telecom fraud. But most people just fear that plans are becoming less affordable.

🚇 “Half an hour queuing for a ten-minute ride” was a common complaint after Shenzhen Metro tightened its security checks on July 20. Much to the dismay of commuters, the stricter checks led to long lines, as all carry-on items must now pass through an X-ray machine, while every passenger is also subject to a handheld body scan. Some wondered why, in an era of AI-powered image screening, security couldn’t be handled more efficiently. Shenzhen is hosting the APEC Economic Leaders’ Meeting later this year, in November.

☀️ Summer childcare worries have been trending, as even dual-income families are reportedly struggling to arrange childcare during the school holidays. Summer programs often last only a month and still require pick-ups during hot afternoons, while private tutors sometimes charge around 200 yuan per hour ($30). More Chinese parents have therefore turned to hiring university students, offering 3,500 to 4,000 yuan per month ($520–$590) to look after their children during the summer break.

👁️ EXPLAINER

How Chinese AI Videos Turn Foreigners Into Villains

“I’m American! You can’t do anything to me!” says a young white man, moments before a strong Chinese man kicks him and throws him to the ground in a single move. A crowd of Chinese aunties standing nearby applauds as the foreigner hits the ground. “Don’t think we’re still the Chinese people of the past,” the Chinese man says. “You don’t want to mess with the Chinese people of today.”

This is just one example among hundreds of similar short videos flooding Chinese social media these days. Featuring various kinds of anti-foreign and racist content, they depict foreigners as threats to China’s social, moral, and national order. Strong, confident Chinese people confront, violently beat, and humiliate them in defense of their country.

Stills from AI videos showing Chinese men beating up misbehaving foreigners.

These videos, which often last between ten seconds and half a minute, are posted by online creators across platforms such as WeChat, Kuaishou, and Douyin. Many of these creators run content-farming accounts devoted entirely to this type of content, which attracts many likes and reactions: the videos are short, visually striking, emotionally powerful, and play into existing prejudices and racialized thinking.

Racist and anti-foreign content is nothing new on Chinese social media and dates back to the earliest days of China’s online video platforms. But the age of AI has brought new dynamics to such content. Last fall, Joshua Dummer reported in Foreign Policy on the growing popularity of AI-generated anti-Black videos presented as cautionary tales about Chinese women becoming involved with African men.

This time, it’s different.

The latest wave of anti-foreign content goes beyond gender dynamics and focuses more broadly on the negative influence foreigners supposedly have on Chinese people and society. Foreigners disrupt orderly Chinese public spaces or threaten the safety of Chinese women, security personnel, or lower-status workers, after which a morally upright Chinese person restores order through violence.

Four Types of Videos

In the dozens of AI videos I’ve analyzed, roughly four categories can be discerned, with different groups of foreigners performing different “narrative jobs.”
(See examples of these videos on my X here, or find them on Bluesky)

1️⃣ The Uncivilized Outsider
Roughly 40% of the videos show foreigners engaging in “uncivilized” behavior and disrupting China’s cleanliness, etiquette, and public order. In these scenes, foreigners are portrayed as dirty, smelly, and disorderly.

One example shows an entire plane of Chinese passengers holding handkerchiefs over their noses because of the smell from an Indian man’s bare feet. He refuses to comply with the flight attendant’s instructions, after which a strong Chinese man approaches and slaps him in the face.

AI video: An Indian passenger disrupts a Chinese flight with smelly feet.

Other examples include foreigners attempting to urinate in the street, occupying multiple seats on public transport, putting their bare feet up on a high-speed train, or otherwise disregarding public etiquette.

These videos predominantly feature Indian characters, but to a lesser extent also white/Western and Filipino characters.

2️⃣ The Entitled Foreign Bully
Roughly 30% of the videos depict foreigners as arrogant, entitled, and aggressive bullies who believe their nationality places them above Chinese rules.

Examples include foreign men and women skipping queues by invoking their foreign status or showing disrespect toward China’s vulnerable elderly or lower-status workers, until a Chinese person teaches them to “respect China’s rules.”

AI video: A Western woman is hit by a shop owner for using her foreign status as a reason to cut the line.

These videos mostly feature white people, but sometimes also Black, Indian, or Japanese characters.

AI video: entitled Indian man gets curry thrown in the face by waiter.

One scene shows an Indian man demanding that the Chinese waiter serving him curry kneel before him, after which the waiter scolds him and throws the curry in his face.

3️⃣ The Sexual and Demographic Threat
Roughly 20% of the videos fall into the category described in Foreign Policy last October, in which foreign men are portrayed as sexual and demographic intruders.

These videos often show Chinese women following foreign partners to Africa or India, only to end up living a nightmare of poverty, abuse, or infidelity. Some explicitly warn Chinese women not to marry foreigners.

AI video: A Chinese woman is first shown in a happy relationship with her African partner, and then shown in a state of desperation after she moved to Africa with him.

There are also many videos showing Chinese men as heroic protectors of women being harassed by foreign men. One recurring scenario shows a Black man harassing a Chinese woman in a shopping street before being beaten by a Chinese man who comes to her defense.

AI video: Chinese man saves Chinese woman from getting harassed by a foreigner.

Although these videos mainly feature Black African men, with Africa portrayed as a kind of dystopia, some also include white or Indian men.

4️⃣ The Undesirable/Dangerous Migrant
About 10% of the videos take place at airport immigration or border control, showing foreigners arriving without money, carrying drugs, or seeking to exploit Chinese hospitality.

One example shows Indian men arriving at the Chinese border and claiming that they want to “enjoy Chinese women.” They are refused entry after an official questions them about their finances.

AI video: Indians denied at the border.

The endgame is always the same: they are denied entry and sent back to their country. These stories predominantly feature Indian characters.

💡 To get a rough idea of which racialized groups appear most often, I analyzed a sample of 35 videos collected from my timeline: approximately 39% featured Indian characters, 28% White/Western characters, 24% Black/African characters, 6% Filipino characters, and 3% Japanese characters.

Reversed Humiliation

The xenophobic AI slop that we’re seeing is about more than just “foreigners behaving badly.” Besides the videos showing Chinese women moving to Africa, the basic formula running through most of them is:

Foreigners cross moral or social boundaries and violate rules → they victimize Chinese people or otherwise bring humiliation or inconvenience to others → forceful intervention by a morally upright Chinese person → punishment and restored order.

These videos do two things.

➡️ One important effect is that they produce a sense of “Chineseness” by constructing a threatening “Other” that is never Chinese (even though the foreigners all look different, they are never ethnically Chinese). In doing so, Chinese national identity is defined through contrast with how bad the Other is.

The foreign villain is deceptive, uncivilized, backward, and disruptive—a threat to women, public order, and social stability—whereas the Chinese characters are morally superior, embodying loyalty, civility, modernity, collective responsibility, and the protection of social and historical continuity. The foreigner therefore does more than play the villain: his imagined identity helps define who the Chinese are and what contemporary China is.

➡️ Another effect is that these videos offer a form of catharsis in China’s “new era.” They coincide with increasingly prominent narratives about China’s exceptional rise, its emerging superpower status, and the “decline of the West.” At the same time, they evoke the painful history of 19th China and the “century of humiliation”—a period portrayed in contemporary education as one in which foreign powers aggressively and violently imposed their rules on a weak China.

These AI fantasies symbolically reverse that history. The videos show that Chinese people are no longer passive victims, but strong and assertive defenders who fight back against foreigners who disrespect them or exploit Chinese hospitality. Through violence presented as morally justified, historical humiliation is transformed into national victory: China is no longer subjected to rules imposed by outsiders, but has become the country that sets the rules and possesses the strength to enforce them.

The Many Faces of Chinese Digital Nationalism

This recent trend shows that digital nationalism in China has many faces, and that this one in particular is not actively boosted by state media nor supported by official voices.

The timing of these videos does not just mark a new era of Chinese digital nationalism; it also coincides with a new wave of China tourism and a travel boom, with trips to China by foreign nationals rising sharply since the Covid era amid more lenient visa policies. This includes an increase in visas issued to Indians at a time when Indian and Chinese authorities have been working to normalize bilateral relations.

Earlier in July, Chinese newspaper The Paper published an article pushing back against growing online hostility toward Indians in China, arguing that individual misconduct should be addressed without stereotyping an entire nationality or turning it into xenophobic outrage. In a noteworthy move, the full article was republished on the website of the Chinese embassy in New Delhi—showing Chinese authorities pushing back against these trends and defending Indians to Chinese netizens.

At the same time, this is perhaps also a case of lead by example. An AI-animated video released by state media outlet China Daily which depicted the Philippines as a “ragged monkey” has also made international headlines recently, with the imagery called racist and unacceptable.

Even though the authorities might not be happy about the flood of racist or xenophobic AI videos at a time when state media are promoting just how welcoming China is to foreigners, official videos such as these can also fan the flames and provide examples for grassroots creators to draw on.