It can be that. But more often i think it’s western chauvinism. The belief that whatever its flaws, the West’s system has to be ultimately morally superior, and therefore any system that is different has to be somehow worse. You have to believe there is something about those other systems that is sinister or evil, or else it would be too painful admitting to yourself that you live in the worse system, and that the suffering you endure (and cause to others) is not actually necessary and unavoidable because the alternatives are not all worse.

So you can admit that the government and media are lying to you about the things they are doing in your country, but surely they cannot be lying about other countries too, because then you would no longer have anything to hang onto that makes you feel superior.

China is just the biggest of the foreign “others” in the present day, but it’s not exclusive to China. You see the same willigness to believe propaganda about Russia, Iran, DPRK, etc.