Likewise. Yes, certainly Xi has taken advantage of the engagement paradigm and, more broadly, the entrenched view of the West as the dominant power and therefore for those concerned with immorality, the most important thing has been to restrict misuses of Western power (racism, imperialism, colonialism, etc). Those misuses are real and horrible and should be corrected, but they co-exist with the very laudable tradition of Wester liberal values (which have never been applied to the full Western population, hence BLM which is such an important movement, but which are still good and real and broadly enforced and of course better than the CCP's low-level ideological bludgeoning of its population into accepting CCP absolute power). I think the paradigm is shifting now as people realize the CCP goal is apparently to fully supplant Western liberal values with subservience to absolute CCP power, and so Xi will behind decreasing returns to the strategy of enlisting foreigners to say China is the bullied one as that strategy relies on the outdated "the West will be all-powerful forever and hence focusing solely one its abuse of that power is always the highest moral duty" view. Once people focus also on CCP issues, resistance will increase (as it has been).

I do think a recovery of the tradition of talking about liberal values is important to counter CCP propaganda, and trying to get more involved in telling accurately the story behind CCP propaganda in order to defend liberal values is a project I've been considering trying to get involved with/started on (in my own tiny way) at some point. Maybe "Friends of Sinocism" can get something going :).