China’s firewall has been fully justified - you need to create an online sphere that is disconnected from western propaganda and is controlled by your own country and people, or the vast resources and psychological techniques that at the west’s disposal can and will infect the minds of people into directly opposing their self-interest and genuinely does create that now cliche Orwellian world where you are told to forget what you know and ignore the evidence of your own senses. Except I’m not sure if we can really do that.

China critics were already borderline memes before all of this and by soon it is pretty much going to be impossible to separate criticism of China and straight up delusional if not manufactured propaganda like Zens.

To be clear China is not communist yet and has some quite obvious problems in their economy, but anyone(I mean among leftists here) that comes out of this not recognizing the massive contrast between the western war time propaganda and the existence of China's firewall and mostly isolated internet culture is not going to have any credibility going forward imo.