[US Trending] The Four Essentials of Middle-Class Downward Mobility in Shenzhen | Xi Jinping’s New Move on Father’s Day | A Livelihood Perspective on the Dragon Boat Festival | Consumption Downgrading in the Trash Can | Zaozhuang Music Festival Withholds Student Workers’ Wages | Nenjiang City Merchants Stage a Collective Shop Closure | The Chinese Black Humor of the World Cup | OPT Work Visa for International Students in the US May Be Cancelled
This episode covers multiple trending topics: including state media promoting Xi Jinping's family upbringing on Father's Day, which sparked netizen satire; Suzhou officials erecting metal barriers during the Dragon Boat Festival to block free views; dumpsters becoming a contested battleground for middle-aged to elderly people, reflecting the economic downturn; the Zaozhuang music festival withholding part-time wages from college students; a collective strike by merchants in Nenjiang protesting inspections and fines; the four-piece set for the impoverishment of Shenzhen's middle class; Chinese referee Ma Ning receiving widespread acclaim for officiating at the World Cup; The Wall Street Journal reporting that Lynas broke China's rare earth monopoly; U.S. Senator Rick Scott introducing a new bill to eliminate funding support for the OPT program; as well as elderly people picking flowers in parks and interactive comments from netizens.
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U.S. Trending Searches lets you hear the voices beyond the Great Firewall. Hello, audience friends, welcome to today's U.S. Trending Searches. I am Qi Xiaotian. First, let's enter the Mobile Phone View of China segment. Yesterday, on Father's Day, the CCP party media intensively released short videos praising Xi Jinping's strict family education, claiming that under his father's personal guidance and example, he grew into a "servant of the people." This kind of propaganda seemingly talks about family tradition, but in reality, it translates personal ethics into a source of political legitimacy. This inevitably brings to mind North Korea's "national loving father" narrative: the supreme leader is shaped as both the national leader and the father and destiny guardian of the people. Its danger lies in replacing institutional constraints on modern politics with one person's family virtues. What is needed is not a "father of the people," but institutions capable of restraining power. When a country begins to constantly recount the leader's family tradition, fatherly love, and character, people should be even more vigilant: this is the prelude to "All-under-Heaven as family." A Twitter netizen commented: The worst thing about Xi Zhongxun is that he failed to raise his son well.
In addition, in the video, Xi Jinping claimed that it was his father's strict education that cultivated him into this "servant of the people." Of course, no one dares to contradict Xi Jinping unless it is Xi Jinping himself. In this early public interview, Xi Jinping recalled his experience when he first arrived to join the sent-down youth in Liangjiahe, frankly saying: "As for going to work, going to labor, I didn't go." Today, however, Xi Jinping has the party media touting his father-son "personal guidance and example" on Father's Day. It seems Xi Jinping's history of enduring hardship is purely post-production special effects.
Last Friday was the Dragon Boat Festival, and the official Suzhou Dragon Boat Festival events sparked concern in the overseas English-speaking circles. Dragon Boat Festival racing is supposed to be a mass entertainment activity, yet Suzhou officials used "safety" as an excuse to surround the riverbanks of the dragon boat race with metal barriers. It is reported that many tourist spots in China, such as Meili Snow Mountain, use similar methods to block free views and force tourists to buy tickets. Netizens said: A normal country has a bottom line, but the Communist Party does not. Every Dragon Boat Festival, those landlords in Guangdong holding carbon fiber paddles worth over 100,000 yuan each race dragon boats in neat unison, spreading across the internet and becoming the official Dragon Boat Festival narrative. However, the Dragon Boat Festival experienced firsthand by ordinary people is like this. Netizens said: There is no most miserable, only more miserable; and there is next year and the year after next.
With China's economy in decline and livelihoods becoming difficult, it is not just these abstract figures, but the personal experience of ordinary people in every industry. A netizen designed a clever experiment using trash cans to expose the falsehood of the "bright prospects of the Chinese economy." The netizen said: "Trash cans inside the Great Firewall have now become a battleground for middle-aged to elderly people. A blogger recorded in a video that the trash cans in his residential compound are basically monopolized by a few people." Who could have imagined that in his 13 years in power, Xi Jinping has dragged the entire country back to the 1980s? It used to be mass layoffs; now it is mass unemployment. In 2026, 12.7 million graduates will enter a sluggish job market nationwide. Some students have already realized the cruelty of this before they even graduate.
On June 20, at a music festival in Tai'erzhuang, Zaozhuang, Shandong, part-time wages for college students were withheld and delayed, leading to a large gathering of students demanding their rights. As a result, the videos of the protest were removed from the entire internet. Students revealed that they were originally promised 120 yuan for eight or nine hours of work, but the actual working hours lasted over ten hours, and in the end, they were only paid 80 to 90 yuan; some students did not receive any money at all, being told they would have to wait until the 23rd. A netizen said to the students: "This is the first lesson the Party has taught you. Remember it well. The job market is so terrible and the pay is unimaginably low, but students with no other choice will still fight for these jobs."
On June 20, at a company in Henan, because the situation for summer jobs is so severe, a large number of young students fought physically on the spot to compete for a single summer job opening. A netizen joked: "Doesn't our Emperor sing the praises of the bright prospects of the Chinese economy every day? Why has it come to this?"
A classic trope in Chinese anti-Japanese war dramas or early films is that when Japanese soldiers enter a village, the villagers lock their doors and hide in the mountains. Recently, local government departments in Nenjiang, Heilongjiang, began "double random" inspections of merchants. Faced with the pressure of rectification, falling operating costs, or the risk of high fines, local merchants chose to collectively close their shops and go on strike. The merchants' strike stunned the local government. On June 21, the Nenjiang Market Supervision Administration issued an announcement stating that rumors of "stationed inspections and high fines" were untrue and accused the merchants of blindly closing their shops and disrupting normal market order. The announcement called on merchants to operate with peace of mind and in accordance with regulations. Dear viewers, do you think the official statement is reliable? A netizen joked: "The news leaked before the bandits came down the mountain; this must be strictly investigated."
As a tech city, Shenzhen created many so-called high-end middle-class people in recent years. Now that the climate has changed, this Shenzhen blogger described the "four-piece set" of the middle class returning to poverty in Shenzhen: buying a house at a high point, losing a high-paying job, failing in entrepreneurship, and failing in investment and wealth management. "This is it, Shenzhen is finished." Dear viewers, do you think Shenzhen is really finished? Please leave a comment in the comment section.
Next, we enter the "Foreign Media on China" segment: The Chinese national football team cannot make it to the World Cup, but Chinese fans have managed to make their presence felt through a referee; this is probably the most awkward "alternative qualification" for Chinese football. The Washington Post published a piece of dark humor on June 20 titled "Once again missing the World Cup, Chinese fans start to embrace a referee." The report says there is a saying in the football world: the best referee is one whose name no one remembers after the match, but Ma Ning is the exact opposite. The 46-year-old Ma Ning has become the most watched Chinese face at this World Cup. He is the first Chinese referee to enter the World Cup for two consecutive times. He served as an assistant referee in Qatar four years ago, and this time he finally became the head referee, officiating the match between Ecuador and Curaçao. Before the World Cup, Ma Ning posted training and behind-the-scenes videos on Xiaohongshu, attracting over 310,000 followers. In the Chinese Super League, he was dubbed the "Card Master" by fans because he issued 9 yellow cards and 3 red cards in a 2015 Shanghai derby. A netizen joked: "Ma Ning goes out with two suitcases, one filled with yellow cards and one with red cards."
China's absence from the World Cup has instead led fans to provide unprecedented support for this previously unpopular referee. A netizen said: "We don't have a team that makes others afraid, but we have a referee who makes others afraid." Ma Ning's memes subsequently went viral, and he received sponsorships from companies like Lenovo, Hisense, and Mengniu. The Chinese men's football team has only made it to the World Cup once in history: in 2002, they lost all three matches and did not score a single goal. Today, the national team is ranked 91st in the world, lagging even behind Zambia, which has less than one percent of China's population. Even more ironic is that the last Chinese head referee to participate in the World Cup, Lu Jun, was later imprisoned for the Chinese Super League match-fixing scandal. From "rushing out of Asia and heading to the world" to "players can't make it to the World Cup, so we can only rely on the referee to appear," Chinese football has spent decades completing an absurd turn. Others watch the World Cup to support their national team, and Chinese fans finally have their own representative this year—it's just that this person's job is to pull out red cards for others."
This US-China trade war has caused Xi Jinping to reveal his ultimate trump card: rare earth monopoly. However, this monopoly tactic is likely about to be broken. On June 19, The Wall Street Journal published a feature-length report titled "She Broke China's Rare Earth Monopoly." The report stated that in the past, Beijing always regarded rare earths as a strategic trump card that could influence the global industrial chain, but history has proven that any attempt to turn resources into weapons will ultimately force opponents to find alternative solutions. The protagonist of the report is Amanda Lacaze, CEO of the Australian rare earth company Lynas. When she took over the company in 2014, she had no mining background whatsoever, her predecessor had lasted only 14 months, and the company's stock price had previously plummeted by more than 90%. More importantly, she faced China's near-overwhelming control over global rare earth processing, but 12 years later, she pulled off a turnaround. Lynas became one of the largest rare earth enterprises in the West, its stock price rose about 15 times, and its revenue increased substantially. In March 2026, the company even reached a preliminary agreement with the US Pentagon to supply critical heavy rare earths long controlled by China.
To keep the company alive, Amanda ruthlessly slashed the executive team and personally moved to the Malaysia plant to solve production problems. During the most difficult financial times, she stayed in cheap hotels and flew to Tokyo to persuade creditors backed by the Japanese government to extend debt maturities, because Japan knew very well that without an alternative supply chain, China could at any time use rare earths to influence Japan's electronics and automobile industries. Reality precisely validated this concern: in 2025, China restricted the export of certain rare earths and magnets, attempting to use rare earths as a trade negotiation chip. However, this move instead stimulated countries like the US, Japan, and Australia to accelerate the establishment of their own mining, processing, and magnet industrial chains, and Lynas thus ushered in new development opportunities. This report truly reveals a law in great power competition: resource advantages can bring influence, but they are hard to become permanent control. The oil crisis gave birth to new energy, chip blockades promoted technological substitution, and rare earth "strangleholds" will likewise drive global supply chain restructuring.
Today, China still occupies a dominant position in the rare earth industry, but the most powerful card in a country's hand is often not that others cannot live without you, but that others have no incentive to leave you. Once you begin to wave this card frequently, the world's smartest engineers, capital, and governments will start researching how to render this card invalid. When that day comes, the once-trump card might just become an ordinary chip.
China's espionage law and blatant intellectual property theft have once again backfired on the Chinese people; this time, the victims may be Chinese international students. On June 18, US Senator Rick Scott introduced a new bill aimed at canceling funding support for the OPT work authorization program, in order to prioritize the interests of American workers and prevent the national security risks arising therefrom. OPT is the work authorization for international students in the US after graduation. The bill will permanently prohibit the Department of Homeland Security from providing funding for the OPT program, and Voice of America made related reports. The report stated that Rick Scott said in a statement published on his official website that the current OPT program allows foreign students, "including more than 33,000 students from communist China," to stay and work in the US after graduating from American universities. On April 10, Rick Scott had written a letter to US President Trump saying that these programs targeting foreign students not only harmed the employment prospects of American fresh college graduates, but were also "abused by the 'communist China' of hostile countries, thereby triggering serious national security risks."
Rick Scott went on to say: "Many OPT holders from 'communist China' work in universities and large technology companies, which enables them to access sensitive technical information and intellectual property. We cannot continue to open our doors to a hostile country that is happy to use our research results against us." Forbes magazine reported on May 11 that the Trump administration is expected to introduce plans to restrict or even terminate the OPT program. On May 12, Acting Director Todd Lyons of US Immigration and Customs Enforcement stated at a press conference held jointly with the immigration agency: more than 10,000 foreign students are suspected of abusing the OPT program, maintaining their legal status by falsifying work records. Lyons said: "The United States will never tolerate security threats originating from the OPT program."
Next, let's look at a few absurd videos. Chinese netizens have a saying: It's not that good people have turned bad, but that bad people have grown old. This blogger filmed several elderly people picking flowers in a Beijing park. When a netizen stepped forward to stop them, they were met with a torrent of abuse. The netizen remarked that they clearly looked like retired officials from inside the system. Netizens commented: They are all loyal soldiers of Mao Zedong from the Cultural Revolution era. Some parents, perhaps to chase traffic, stage patriotic videos featuring their own children. Take this 14-year-old boy, for example—he has 'red genes' from birth. A netizen said: It's good that he likes to read. If he keeps reading, he will eventually read the real history. He will discover that the things he once believed to be true were all lies, and the leader he worships so much is actually... well, you know. At that point, I hope he will awaken. What I fear is that he never reads and only listens to the Xinwen Lianbo program.
Finally, we enter the netizen interaction segment. PeaceEveryone commented on the people queuing in the rain to petition at the Beijing Letters and Calls Bureau, saying: The greatest tragedy is that those who petition still believe in the Chinese Communist Party (CCP)! A-Hao commented on Lei Jun copying Jensen Huang eating noodles, saying: One can only say that Lei Jun is truly 'never forgetting his original intention,' consistently implementing a product development route 'based on plagiarism' all along. The article says: If you can't make a good product, you can only resort to these messy gimmicks. That's all for today's US trending topics.
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