I'm curious if Germans are aware of this Chinese meme tangentially about them. Strap yourself in as I explain this whole thing.
Since ancient times Chinese society could be divided into three strata:
The ruling class (王): the emperor, the imperial household, ministers and other such near the center of power
: highly educated upper class
The people (民): everyone else
In their constant Game of Throne with the ruling class and among themselves the scholar-official class have always tried to position themselves as "the voice of the people". One mechanism they do this is a thing called "法先王" which can be translated to something like "follow the ways of ancient wise kings". They would voice social problems encounter by the common people as deviation by the ruling class from supposed ancient examples. This is not intended to be a rigorous historical fact finding despite the name, rather the "ancient wise kings" are more like imaginary utopia rather than actual workable historical solutions to new problems.
When China was defeated in 1840 in the First Opium War the scholar-official of that age realized they have to change their marketing, as the defeat of China evidently showed superiority of foreigners over Chinese tradition. Since then "法先王" has been modified to "法外国" or "follow the ways of foreigners".
The success of Xinhai Revolution greatly weakened the previous clear delineation between the three classes, and CPC's rule only furthered this. CPC's vision for China is a classless society made up of a single class called "人民“ or just The People. Hence the party slogan "为人民服务" or "Serve the People". Nevertheless even CPC cannot transform a 5000 year old social system in just a few decades and shadows of the former three classes still exist in China.
Today's counterpart to historical scholar-official are known as "公知" or "public intellectuals". They still followed the "法外国" tradition started by their fore bearers. Just as "法先王" was based on imaginary utopia so is "法外国" of today. Even as a child I felt that when public intellectuals say things like "bottom of Tokyo Bay is covered by a layer of coal deliberately bought by the Japanese government and dumped there so when there's an energy crisis their children could dig it up to save themselves, we should be forward thinking like them" it sounded pretty questionable.
Recent years two particular example of "法外国" have become memes due to how publicly they were disproven by facts:
1. The US have dozens of hospital ships already built and can redeploy them to anywhere along their coast to deal with medical emergencies like COVID-19, therefore there's nothing to be proud of being able to build those two hospitals in days
2. Germans are so rigorous and responsible that when Qingdao government tried to perform maintenance on their drainage system and could not find suitable replacement parts, they contacted Germany for help and the German said "don't worry, we thought ahead about this. Just dig around and you will find within 3m of the drainage pipe a package of replacement parts in perfect condition preserved by oil paper".
We all saw what happened in New York in 2020 with that first one, and the 2nd one received a huge amount of ridicule last year when all those flooding in Germany happened.
As people of China become better connected to the world via internet and traveling "法外国" will increasingly become untenable. I think however public intellectuals won't disappear entirely. Rather much like 1840 they will just invent a new paradigm to replace "法外国", possibly returning to "法先王" again.
