I mean the US is so scared shitless of socialist propaganda, or rather the political upheaval and loss of global dominance by capital that it would lead to, that it has literally bombed and invaded entire countries of civilians over it. Unless a country has any ability to fight back; in which case we do anything in our power to undermine that country's political process by devastating it economically, conducting covert CIA operations, and funding fundamentalist religious groups.

I think China learned a lesson at some point and, in all fairness, it probably wouldn't have been allowed to develop to this point if it was more welcoming of exchange with western media. (Well, that, and the fact they've funded their socialist project by providing cheap goods for western capitalists to increase their profit margins with)

If we don't even trust China to define China's truths, why should we trust America to do so? You've seen how much misinformation has damaged our political process. If the Chinese people are happy with their government, and data says over 90% of them are, who are we to say what is right for their country? If in fact they don't trust their government, it should be left up to them to decide what to do with it and when. Just as we wouldn't like it very much if China dictated to us what is right and wrong, even if it were to lift millions out of poverty like it did for the Chinese people.

America manipulates media too, arguably to a much greater extent. However, it's more of a firehose method. Western media is fully allowed to lie, sensationalize, and manipulate truths with no other recourse than an "invisible hand" of a "free market" that is fully willing to gobble up misinformation and spit it back out between each other. For every keyword that is censored on its way from America to China, there's a billion dollars waiting for any media outlet willing to propagate the capitalist narrative. Non- or anti-capitalist media does not have similar funding, for the very fact that those who are so invested in capitalism are not going to throw their money at outlets which undermine their profits. It's also not like America doesn't straight up censor things when it can do so covertly. At least China's censorship is out in the open.

This is a whataboutism, to be sure, but look at the whole picture. It's all the more reason for China to weed out information from the West that is regularly and systemically manipulated, in the ways I've just described, to undermine them.

It's exactly the same situation as Israel carpet bombing all of Palestine and continuing to receive billions of dollars in support, only for the resistance fighters to be called terrorists, caged, and starved when they fire back a few rockets. It's simply not comparable and the hypocrisy is stark.

There's also the small matter of their language, the friction of which was highlighted when western journalists were quick to cry censorship because nothing came up when they searched "xi jinping" and "tianenmen" on red note. Of course, this was because it's spelled 習近平 and 天安门 in China. This language barrier makes Chinese media very inaccessible to westerners, and vice versa, which isn't really China's problem as the Chinese language already gives them access to all 1.4 billion people they are responsible for. Like red note has been accessible all this time, it's only now becoming popular in the West as a fuck you to the government for banning tik tok.

(Sorry this got to be so long, there's a lot of background to cover here that tends to be obscure to the average American. I'm only just able to articulate it myself as I don't tend to write things I can't back up with evidence or reasoning. Happy to expand on anything I've glossed over for the sake of brevity.)

There were several "social credit systems" that were set up in various provinces. These were mainly attempts to aggregate public records from different departments into one searchable database. It mostly affected business owners since they have the largest public record footprint. The idea was you could look up who owns what business and how many code violations those businesses had.

This triculates into the american rumor mill and comes out as the "social credit score" meme which is fantasitcal projection from our own opaque credit system.

Great example of how "ironic" racism is still racism. It invites actual racists to join and fit in.

That's generally how propaganda works, though.

But nowhere else on the planet invests as much money and effort into it as the US. $325 million a year on anti China propaganda alone:

https://www.congress.gov/bill/118th-congress/house-bill/1157/text

You never saw that mentioned in the media did you? There is a reason for that:

It is one of the most important aspects of our media system, and yet hardly known to the public: most of the international news coverage in Western media is provided by only three global news agencies based in New York, London and Paris.

The key role played by these agencies means Western media often report on the same topics, even using the same wording. In addition, governments, military and intelligence services use these global news agencies as multipliers to spread their messages around the world.

https://swprs.org/the-propaganda-multiplier/

I'm also learning it's not real dude we've been duped

China’s a nation that seems to believe that they can use their government to make things better.

Isn't that what you pay taxes for?

The fact that Xiaohongshu is Chinese is the point, it's a protest against banning Chinese Social Media without holding US-based Social Media to the same standard.

Damn, it’s so nice that nobody invented sarcastic vagueposting yet.