China's offensive and defensive soft power needs to do a lot more work in order to counter thess kinds of propaganda offensives by the West and India.
China is already labelled by the West and India for employing "Wumao" internet bot army to "spread Chinese propaganda". Might as well put this into mass and effective use.
Seeing how inept China's propaganda department is at directing efforts and doing their job on the international stage is just sad and pitiful.
That's the only game that Indians can play: trash talking. Even if China is all that 'evil' as they described it to be, China can still bring tangible benefits to India's neighbours without any strings attached.
Need a new port? Sri Lanka asked India first. Then waited for decades for a India to say: no. Sri Lanka then asked China. China said yes right away. Then Sri Lanka had difficulty paying China's loans for the port. China said: "No problem, you pay your crippling Western debts first, we'll work out something for you". In the meantime, the port continues to operate for Sri Lanka. Not getting shutdown and liquidated, like what other bankers would do. China took the hit for bad loans for Sri Lanka, understanding Sri Lanka's difficulty. Hence, at the very least, the Sri Lankan leaders know and appreciate China that.
What has India been doing all these time? Trash talking, that's all. India had done pittance to help it's neighbours in need, but it trash talks alot. Trash talk gets India nowhere. It is a short term relief. But in the longer term, all of South Asia except India and Bhutan are already in the BRI. Even Bhutan is trying to settle it's border disputes with China in hopes to finally jump on the prosperity bandwagon. India can trash talk all it wants. While China silently wins over it's neighbourhood.
'Wuhan-virus'? 'CCP evil'? Most of the developing world don't really care. Only Indians and Westerners care. Values and bloc politics don't put food on the table. Only hard economy does. China has hard economy, while India has a pretender economy. Propped up by Indian and Western hype. Without China's industry to leverage off, India would have no competitive industry to hype about. Just like Germany suddenly finding out that it's 'world-class' industries heavily rely on Russian cheap energy and hydrocarbons. India will learn one day when it pushes China too far, that it's 'superpowa' industry is actually heavily reliant on China's industrial might and goodwill.
