Sorry if it’s a bit off-topic, but your frustration feels relevant to my current thing.
These days I’ve basically made a hobby out of tracking down sources with regards to what I call the “sinophobia machine”, it’s a big ecosystem from yes the usuals at the top from CIA cutouts like RFA and NED which is now directly funded by US Congress, to human rights groups, think tanks, NGOs and academics alike who weigh in with some kind of veneer of expertise. This ecosystem includes so many splinter orgs like “x government in exile” and even sometimes makes connections with splinter orgs from the falungong cult media empire. Oh, and all the Chinese dissidents and liberals who are genuinely convinced of western democracy, as well as white guys in yellowface “pseudonyms,” who get passed around in western news media as serious (implied independent) activists – the very same news outlets that denigrate domestic BIPOC activists ranging from landback to BLM. Western mainstream media loves to pull sources from all of these kinds of groups, soaps it all up and spins and spins anti-China yarns to their unquestioning masses of devoted audiences, who then repeat and croak up their own anti-China, uh, memes? like pooh bear. Even when their audiences question the veracity and trustworthiness of their media and calls it “fake news”, the sinophobic stories are rarely, if ever, questioned. **
Sometimes I have to pinch myself cuz it’s so widespread, there’s so much going on and not a lot of people are discussing or even seem to be aware of how deep those roots are buried… yeah I feel like conspiracy theorist, but I literally have all the threads lining up. The other day I was reviewing a list (thanks wikipedia, you are a den of imperial core simps but man there’s so many crumb trails goddamn) of the more prominent Chinese dissident student protesters from the June fourth incident who were ahem evacuated by CIA/MI6+triad+whoever involvement in Operation Yellowbird and I stumbled onto a guy who founded an Asian American organization that had participation in leading/organizing parts of the #stopaapihate movement. I know they’re not like directly controlled in a straight line to some grand puppet master, not even close because that would be absurd, but this stuff is so interconnected I’m starting to feel like I’m losing it. I’m glad the RedNote/小红书 thing is happening right now, but I doubt it will lead to anything like a consciousness of what I’ve described above.
** I do also want to point out that in large part I view asian americans (general, not every individual), which I am one of, as part and participants of this occurring, or at least allowing sinophobia to go rampant, in the present day. In Houston area back in 2014, a Chinese immigrant family was found all shot dead in their home. There were rumors in the diaspora community that the dad was either an official or industry head that escaped the anti-corruption sweep in the mainland (thank you Xi) and a lot of people including my parents speculated that it was an extrajudicial hit saying that the murders were really clean and nobody found their bodies in their house for a long time. And for a long time no leads turned up so the rumors lingered. Well, 8 years later in 2022 the police found their man with both DNA evidence and a motive (coworker), not CPC hitmen. Contrast with this: in 1994 Connie Chung spread a sinophobic trope on CBS, and I quote: “Every day, planeloads of Chinese citizens arrive legally in the United States, ordinary people, but to the Chinese Government, some of them may be future spies, who a few years down the road will be activated to steal America’s military and technological secrets, whether they want to or not.” Various Asian American groups actually protested this for four months and they eventually got CBS to air an apology and correction. Can you imagine that today?
I’ll be honest, the most optimistic outcome for 'muricans I can envision with this TT->XHS thing is a slew of concessions, not unlike New Deal as a reaction to socialist stirrings/comparisons of labor conditions to gains in USSR, or shifting the treats paradigm like trickledown Reaganomics. which I don’t think they can pull off, at least not as easily, since it requires willing participation and buying-in of the public… maybe that can still be manufactured, who knows. More likely though, we’re gonna get turbo McCarthyism and flooring the gas on the new cold war into warmer territory.
Speaking of the new cold war, I know there’s been speculation about false flag operations as they’ve been used or attempted/contemplated with ukraine and south korea. Of course, intelligence ops in present moment are never privy to the public so we can only really know about stuff in hindsight, if at all, but given (1) the CIA likely had to rebuild (if not the whole thing then a lot of it) from their network in China being dismantled or at least severely damaged in 2010-12, and (2) how loudly western media was bemoaning Xi sweeping the national “house” for corruption… I feel a careful optimism about an unlikely escalation of cold to hot war. China has every interest in keeping it cold and just letting the economics run its course. Of course regarding (1) their network is probably back “online” since it’s been over a decade, although their attempts at stirring up shit like all the US/UK flags during HK separatist or the A4 protests was… laughable, in real terms. I think the effect was more pronounced for the audiences of the theatrics back at home, “freedom lovers” cheering on democracy wins in “authoritarian” states.
But pandora’s box is open, and definitely can’t be closed - especially on the hypocritical stance on free speech. Tiktok was only shut down 14 hours, what a joke. And everyone knows it’s because of tiktokers (many on the pro-palestine issue) going to XHS. If they ban XHS or force it to become RedNote | XiaoHongShu similar to how Tiktok | Douyin… well, I have heard on the CN side that XHS was contemplating splitting the service by demographic, if anything, for moderation purposes. Which makes sense to me tbh but I doubt they’d sell a split to US, or at least I hope they wouldn’t consider it.