Incredible Things Are Happening In China

Submission 12,922

Part of a series on China. [View Related Entries]

About

Incredible Things Are Happening In China is a catchphrase and copypasta that is used to remark on Chinese news, videos or memes. The phrase can be traced back to X / Twitter in 2020, with its usage gradually increasing in consecutive years. While the phrase is often used to comment on trivial news and cute animal videos shared by Chinese state media, the meme is also evoked to sincerely comment on developments in Chinese policy. In 2023, the phrasal template "Incredible Things Are Happening in X" came to be used to describe events in various other countries.

Origin

The earliest known use of the phrase "Incredible things are happening in China" can be traced back to posts on X (formerly Twitter) made by users @housetrotter^[1] and @muenzenberg_w^[2] on December 3rd and December 5th, 2020.

An August 3rd, 2021, post on iFunny^[3] used the catchphrase as a title, while a September 3rd post on X^[4] by @goingtoflorida1 was the first post using the phrase to cross 1,000 likes (seen below).

The earliest known post to use the phrase "Incredible things are happening in China" to comment on Chinese media outlets reporting on cute animals was a December 7th, 2021, post by @DerekPutin,^[5] gathering over 20,000 likes in two years (seen below).

Spread

A September 6th, 2022, post by X user @goofxist^[6] used the phrase "Incredible things are happening in China" to comment on Chinese state media reporting on an orange cat. the post gathered over 96,000 likes in a year (seen below).

An October 15th, 2022, post by X user @castawaymariner^[7] used the catchphrase and gathered over 25,000 likes in a year (seen below, left), while a January 9th, 2023, post by user @KyleTrainEmoji^[8] using the phrase gathered over 9,000 likes in a year (seen below, right).

A post on /r/TheDeprogram^[9] on October 15th, 2023, by Redditor /u/Rude-Weather-3386 using the phrase gathered over 1,000 upvotes in three months.