If you can't beat the competition, accuse them of denying people's rights like helping to rig elections. It's a typical tactic to deflect negative attention on one's self to someone else.
Problem is that they are crying wolf way too much and even the brainwashed western masses are starting to see through the lies.
Also, China is too far away to be considered a threat in most western nations.
I mean, what does the average western consumer have to actually be worried about even if all the fear-mongering fake news pieces in the western MSM propaganda machine are true? Yes, big bad China now has a copy of your cat video, OMG! The horror!
Even those actively working to harm Chinese interests do not really have anything to fear so long as they stay out of China or unless they are also trying to make money in China.
I think that is the biggest weapon China has to undermine western propaganda against it, as even the most brainwashed of westerners can see the contrast between how ‘big bad China’ and how ‘freedom loving America’ operates.
Anyone who actively works to damage American interests like those FLG, WUC and now HK riot leaders are doing would have found themselves hauled away to a black site by their short and curlies; or been ‘aided’ to ‘suicide’ themselves or been the victims of fatal ‘random accidents’ or muggings.
That is a double edged sword that also bind China’s hands.
It can most certainly liquidate its enemies no matter where they hide and under who’s protection, but doing so would also loose its soft and harmless image, which Beijing is reluctant to do.
So right now, China has the problem of traitors and foreign agents able to try their best to harm Chinese interests with little to no fear of retaliation; which is offset by the scepticism most westerners have towards China threat propaganda despite the best efforts of the western MSM because those same traitors and agents can shoot their mouth off on China, yet nothing bad happens to them.
At present, on balance, it serves Chinese interests more to maintain that popular western notion that no matter how rich and powerful China grows, it’s still far away and unable to touch them in their ‘safe’ homelands than to scare off traitors with examples of what happens to their kind.
