Not really a conspiracy theory. It stems from the sort of meme racism that’s been internalized in society. Even socialists in the west who are supposed to be anti-racist and should know better cannot help themselves. Earlier this year, I’ve seen people in the CTH subreddit say something to the effect of: “I know that we’re probably lying about our numbers, but that doesn’t mean PRC isn’t cooking their numbers either.” Ok, I thought, skepticism is healthy, whatever. And then they show their whole ass by citing the Li Wenliang shit as an example of PRC’s dishonesty, which is itself a piece of consent manufacturing by MSM, revealing that their skepticism is completely for show and they just reverted to their latent liberal performative tendencies with racist characteristics. They so desperately wanted to seem all impartial and objective and credible to their lib friends that they ended up falling into the consent manufacturing trap ironically.