At its core, it is a kind of projection along the lines of: “I’m an enlightened, worldly Western person who is almost immune to propaganda, and Chinese people are a mixed bag, but overall they are xxx.”
This is not the social reality in China. As the author’s background indicates, this is the imagining of an American who moved to the States at the age of four and has some interest in China due to ancestry.
Just to give one example—because there isn’t enough space here, and I can’t be bothered to write out more:
> Here is the first verse of a popular children’s song: ...
And yet, in more than twenty years of my life interacting with people of different ages from all over China, I have never once heard of this supposedly “popular children’s song.”
After all this article is just another BS about “It is concerning how much China blablabla...” Actually, on _Social Reality in_ Chinese American is they consider those “Chinese Chinese” as basically gorillas, parading them in front of other European Americans as if to say: “Look, these Chinese Chinese are my ancestors! Let’s study them together—and just look at how much further we Chinese Americans have evolved compared with them.” It IS a fancy imagination for those who really don't know zero about what's the reality of the people in the GFW.