Not to mention how they are openly expansionist in the SCS and obviously wrt Taiwan.
Of course they want to be seen as reasonable, their ideal is to control the international narrative just how they can do it internally in China.
The covert stuff gives some degree of plausible deniability and it causes a good amount of the population to be complacent and ignore reality. I don't see how this can be considered good for anyone but the people creating propaganda.
I don't like it from any party, but from a moral standpoint, the more authoritarian someone is about their propaganda, the more invasive and violent it feels to me.
I perceive what the CCP is doing as denying my (and other people's) humanity and individual rights. I simply cannot accept a government that imprisons artists and human rights activists. A world where art is crime is not one I find worth living in.
I perceive American propaganda in the same category as advertising, harmful and annoying, but they won't lock me up or threaten my safety if I speak up against the propaganda. Well, at least that's how it used to be, who knows with the current trajectory.