Right on, it's only a free exchange of ideas if US alphabet agencies can exclusively put their thumb on the scale.

The CCP's "influence" here is just letting content exist that would normally be suppressed on other platforms. Which, obviously, the US government doesn't like - do not intersperse the pro-US military content with anticapitalist rhetoric!!!

It's a counterweight to the US glow agencies putting their thumbs on the scale for domestic propaganda platforms.

The CCP is a scourge on humanity, predominately in their own country; whereas the US establishment* is also a scourge, but its evils are off-shored. US and China also have powerful propaganda models that control information. Silencing opposition inside of the country is not the way to win a war -- educating people about it and letting them make up their own mind is the only way out of furthering a "censorship industrial complex".

1 - neoliberals, neoconservatives, fundamentalist zionists, other "factions" composing the majority of those who largely want the warfare/welfare state