The fact that Westerners can’t tell reality from satire is part of the entertainment for them. I’m not going to fault Chinese netizens for wading into the garbage pail that is the Western media landscape to bait the Western liberals swimming around in their hatred, ignorance and impotence. But it has a material effect as well. Accounts like Zhao are baiting liberals into going mask-off with their white supremacism and showing how stupid and hypocritical they are at the same time, on their own ‘turf’, in front of onlooking Global South netizens. And unlike Westerners, Global South netizens do know what China’s actual stance on Taiwan is.

The US State Department is far more dangerous where it uses elections, coups and colour revolutions to undermine the Global South, which is the only way it ever scores wins recently. It’s never going to have difficulty manufacturing consent for war at home. So to my mind, disabusing Global South people of the idea that Western liberals and their governments actually care about them is far more valuable than avoiding looking like ‘warmongers’, and I’m pretty sure the Chinese MFA thinks the same even though they’ll never announce it.