A few years ago I thought that the party propaganda efforts were clumsy and transparent. Now I think a lot of that stuff is not designed for the west. I think a lot of the more antagonistic content is aimed at Chinese nationalist netizens who get just as excited by "owning the west" as conservative trolls do about "owning the CCP".

But I think that the western media is missing the real trick by focusing in on all these snarky comments and internet memes.

Outside of troll battles on social media, there is a more sophisticated influence operation happening that I am increasingly bumping up against in my life outside of Sinocism/China hand circles. That is, this idea that China is full of ancient, mystical tradition that westerners could never truly understand. That Chinese culture is unique and exceptional and perhaps democracy doesn't work for them. That "the Chinese people" are legitimately "having their feelings hurt" every time a foreigner expresses a political view that crosses the CCP's latest "red line".

This conflation of ethnically Chinese individuals worldwide with the PRC as a nation and the CCP as a political party is starting to have a payoff, I think, even outside of China. There seems to be an increasing number of people in the west who believe they are being anti-racist or showing solidarity with the Global South by bending themselves into a pretzel defending an actual dictatorship with far more oppressive structures than the ones they live under.

I think this is the real propaganda success of the current CCP. Their wolf warrior tactics might have created more enemies in some circles, but I think this parallel work is creating softer hearts too, and that might prove to be a problem for western leaders who try advance hawkish policy.