2018 was definitely a year when it ramped up a lot.
The whole Adrian Zenz stuff started becoming prominent around then, the Hong Kong protests happened in 2019... and that's also the time when so-called Dengists started becoming a prominent force in the online left. r/GenZedong was started in July 2019 for example, while before that the kind of support for China was rare both in (western) IRL and online leftist communities.
That doesn't mean that this is an entirely new development. "China bad" had a spike in 2008, with the whole Tibet stuff and the Olympic games, and leftists in support of post-Mao China have existed for at least 22 years, going by this photo from the yearly Luxemburg-Liebknecht Demonstration in Berlin, 2001 [The text: "Friendship and Trade with China creates Jobs"]
Side note: this one's fun [Text: Dear Police, please don't beat us up, we could be your future foreign ministers! - Context: Joschka Fischer, neoliberal warhawk from the Green party and foreign minister 1998-2005 was a violent new left activist in the 70s before joining the libs]
2018 is coincidentally the year that the average liberal realized that Taiwan and Thailand are in fact, two separate countries.
Yeah it feels like 2005 - 2017 was mostly “you should learn Chinese bro, that’s the emerging market to play in.” Which they right for the wrong reasons lol
Yeah, China just sort of existed in the popular consciousness. It was the focus of a lot of "job stealing" rhetoric but the big China Bad push didn't start until the Trump years.
