Are you suggesting that the government causes shark attacks? Do they control the sharks, or just have agents to push the swimmers into their jaws?

Seriously though, democratic governments are much less good at propaganda operations than despotic ones, not necessarily because the people involved are much more honest on an individual level, but just because democratically elected governments are never really in all that much agreement about what sort of propaganda ought to be spread. The genius of democracy is that if you keep the people in power constantly fighting with each other they don't have as much time left over to screw the rest of us.

So although "whatabout the US?" is inevitably the top comment on every thread about the evils of China, I think that just sometimes we ought to actually pay attention to China qua China.