The CIA and assorted western organisations responded to Soviet attempts to destabilise the western social order in the 1960s. They searched for a way to disarm and neuter the traditional allies of counter-authority thinking in the west. The exact same people and organisations who would typically be allies of counter culture and form a fifth column inside the west.
They successfully converted actual civil rights fighters and truth tellers into LGBTIXYZ toilet militants who are more concerned about what high profile people say and do, with cancel culture replacing learning, thinking, and the emotional capability of holding discussions without calling the other group a nazi/wumao/50 cent shill/ bootlicker etc.
Don't get me wrong and conflate exaggerated or actual grievances of separate identity groups or assume I consider everyone in terms of political absolutes. But it should be noted by all reasonable people that there is a lot of sinister brainwashing going on in the west, forces pulling people's emotions in some very obvious directions for nefarious agendas. What started out as a response to Soviet (I'm assuming) meddling in destroying the American family unit (the first attack) has evolved into becoming the greatest psychological warfare weapon wielded by God knows who these days in the US/western Europe. There is no way China's pathetic propaganda warfare unit/s can hope to contend with this but the least we can hope for is its ability to preserve China's internal stability.
If the Western propaganda machine was truly so mighty, do you really think they'd be trying to argue that brushing some kid's teeth is sinister?
What they are actually doing is scraping the bottom of the barrel because they have no better material to work with!
The fact is, truth will always win against lies in the end. It's how the West won the Cold War. They didn't need to make up these ridiculous lies back then, all they needed to do was to show Soviet citizens what they were missing out on. The Soviets tried to counter that with propaganda, and ended up failing miserably.
Today, the shoe is on the other foot. It's the West that is trying to fool us people with these kinds of propaganda. They are no different than the Cultural Revolution era propaganda that claimed people in capitalist countries were living in hell. All China needs to do is response is show the truth.
The Cold War wasn't ended overnight. It took decades and an insurmountable economic advantage from the West for the Soviets to finally admit the truth. China is only starting its ascension, and if history records 2020 as the year China surpassed the West, it will still take many decades for the West to admit the truth.
COVID-19 was a litmus test. It showed that Western society, in general, is not only incapable of responding effectively to an imminent threat, it is also incapable of surmounting its own internal divisions in order to work towards a common goal.