I'm truly terrified by how sophisticated, hegemonic and effective anti-China propaganda has become. The English speaking world has been so relentlessly blanketed in the two "Big Lies" about China (HK/Xinjiang) and many small lies, that they've created an alternate reality.
Trying to have a conversation with someone who only gets their information about China from the NYT or Reddit is borderline impossible. This is how the propaganda works: it becomes self-perpetuating and self-reinforcing.
First, you establish the baseline lie: "China is oppressing Xinjiang" Then, anything that has to do with Xinjiang becomes toxic because "that's where China is oppressing people" so we end up with the mask story: "your masks are made by oppressed people in XJ"
No one bothers to verify the baseline assumption (oppression in XJ) anymore because it's become hegemonic and reflexive. The power of capitalist propaganda is to repeat a Big Lie so often that it becomes reflexive and the smaller lies associated with it become accepted by default
Not a single journalist in the English speaking world that works for a capitalist outlet will do a serious investigation of HK or XJ, because their careers depend on them propagating the two Big Lies and copy-pasting corporate think tank talking points (CSIS, CFR, etc)
The absolute and hegemonic anti-China consensus across so many supposedly independent outlets is a stunning confirmation that we continue to live in an era of disturbingly efficient capitalist information control
It doesnt matter if you have "free speech" or social media or whatever if the most powerful and loudest voices with the most reach (capitalist media) are all coordinating information campaigns with huge resources behind them.
The US has mastered the art of flipping the world upside down. As one of the most authoritarian and anti-democratic countries in the world, it has convinced huge portions of its population that places like China are in fact "authoritarian" and that the US is a democracy.
Even though this is laughable for anyone like me or my circle to believe and we think we're so smart for understanding the reality, we don't have a good grasp on how or why this propaganda is so effective with so many people.
We should be more conscious of just how dramatically lopsided the information space is. The illusion given by social media (open information) belies the reality that a massive edifice of highly paid professionals (and unpaid volunteers) are working every day to distort reality.
