Yeah she's quite perceptive to point that out. If you look at the current "friends of China" they are getting a little long in the tooth. The seeds that were sown did bear fruit for a while but where is the next crop going to come from?

This is where all the influence operations have hurt them badly, you literally cannot say something positive about China on any western social media without getting called a bot or shill. I don't think that's the case with Iran or even North Korea.