> a bad awakening
I have not seen people becoming more informed about China. Much the opposite: I have seen the rapid spread of a bizarre image of China that has almost nothing to do with the reality on the ground.
Even the western propoganda will come with its own hyperbole.
But some things are clear cut, like creating artificial islands and claiming rocks near other countries to claim maritime territory like in South China Sea. There are many more examples which are not helping CCP's case at this point.
Criticism of what CCP is doing now is not criticism of Chinese people. Taiwan is a state which is majorly ethnically Han Chinese and it doesn't get the same criticism even though its past is also not all happy.
But an increasing number of people, especially Americans, really think the Chinese government/police really are just openly killing people in the streets with no consequence (lol), they’ve enslaved the entirety of Africa and stolen the land due to the debt of building a few trains, and other bizarre stuff. Any time anyone is like “I’ve been there and it’s not that bad,” people scream that you’re a shill and scream “WINNIE THE POOH” as if that does anything. The level is discourse involving the country is embarrassingly low, and when it reaches that level, it does just two things: breeds absolute hatred (hate crimes involving Asians are up) and pushes people not buying into it the the opposite direction of the propaganda.
There's a set few countries where if you post anything not explicitly negative about them, people come out of the wood works to post a few set phrases.
here's a submission on the frontpage right now https://www.reddit.com/r/iamatotalpieceofshit/comments/snzur..., particularly look at some completely benign comments getting buried with downvotes, you basically have to preface everything with "I hate the chinese government, but" or else you get called a chinese shill and downvoted.
edit: like look at this https://www.reddit.com/r/iamatotalpieceofshit/comments/snzur..., this dude is literally copy and pasting this comment and getting 5000 upvotes and awards for it and all the responses are basically "i haven't watched any of this but all chinese are cheaters by blood so you're definitely right" and all the responses to those are "you will lose social credit" or "winnie the pooh" or talking about chinese shills despite every copy and pasted anti china post having positive votes, its so weird.
it makes me mad that these huge internet communities that are and have always been racist against chinese people (i.e the brainwashed, cheaters, drones rhetoric that has existed since 2013 and almost certainly before) but now they use tragic humanitarian crises as cover to shut down all pushback. reddit discussion on the olympics is literally more racist than what gets posted on /sp/, and is far less self aware.
Are you denying that China has wrongfully imprisoned hundreds of thousands of Uyghurs and begun to deny Hong Kong the autonomy it is promised under the law? Just to pick two of the posters' subject matter.
Perhaps you meant "bizarre image" in a purely aesthetic sense. It does not seem like condemnation of what's treated in the posters is even controversial outside China. It's certainly not unique to the US.