I agree with some people on here stating that China is lacking in the area of PR, and could net benefit from improving its weaknessess... Compared to US, heck even compared to Russia, China PR/propaganda in the world is sorely lacking. Part of it is structural in the sense that China is fighting asymettric uphill battle because American gained so much influence in the world for so long, from hollywood to a million other advantages that even if Chinese PR was on par qualitatively and quantitatively with that of the West, it should wouldn't be as effective and would be drowned out by the West... a simple example is see who controls the Google Play store? Google is argueably intelligence extension/arm of the US government at this point, (nevermind it got started with CIA/Mossad seed monies), and one stroke of the pen the US can order Google via Google Play to shut down the likes of TikTok, WeChat simply be delisting them from the Play Store. US holds this power because it developed the smartphone first, through that if Apple's initial innovation (app store concept) and later the usurping of the worldwide IoT (to include smartphone, tablet etc) devices and endpoints by Google trojan horse called Android... So at least initially it was the US lead that gave it this power and position that it can now use or abuse at its every whim and impulse to effect the sort of heavy handed sanctioning power of US hegemony.
Take the Twitter platform for example... Twitter is a bona fide news platform and broadcast/alert system for companies and countries alike. Twitter is integrated into so many things now, worldwide. And even Iranian politicians are on it, even folks from North Korea... how can China win the PR war when its opponent controls the chokepoints of information? If suddenly world opinion started to turn (hypothetically) all the US has to do is shutdown all Chinese twitter channels and its game over...
So information warfare, fake news, propaganda and PR on the whole isn't going to be China's strong suit for a long long time, if ever. But that doesn't mean China cannot do things to improve so that its relatively in comparison not as bad. Right now China is far from mastering the art of the spin or whatever one calls it and I see a lot of low hanging fruit that China can do to improve its PR.
Now onto the other thing, these same people on here that say China PR sucks are the ones that seem to naively believe that "if only China played nice and conceded a little to be generous/magnanimous and tried harder to make friends, etc" that it wouldn't be in the position it is in today, that it would magically gain a bunch of allies and form alliances over the world, and that its basically China's fault that America is coming down hard on it because China doesn't believe in the system of liberalism /democracy and if only China would soften a little bit and not be as stubborn and be more open and transparent that all would be well and that America would welcome the friendly competition blah blah blah... Yeah these folks have no clue how the real world works... PR/progaganda/etc serves its master (hegemony) and NOT the other way around!
It is these same people that I would venture to guess would recommend that China give up its dream of tech ascension (as in sell Huawei to Western companies, forfeit its 5G patents, stop pursuing own development if IC/chips), and stop the development of homegrown jet engines, hypersonic weapons, and denuclearize, sell/kill TikTok, DJI, WeChat, and basically like Pompeo says "become a normal country" (as in like all the other behaving vassal colonies) ... forgive America's debt, let India have whatever land it wants, be okay with Tiawan independence, give up the SCS and kill off the BRI/OBOR, do not do a digital Yuan, continue to buy all oil in USD, don't have relations with Iran, give independence to Xinjiang, Tibet, and Hong Kong, stop drinking bat soup, become fully democratic and hold elections, open up its market to Western companies, get rid of the Great Firewall, allow US "News" into mainland China, etc .... then America will be its "friend" again....
Then Pompeo, Bannon, Wilber Ross, Cotton and Trump will say good things about China and praise China for being "open" and "democratic" and "free" and "clean", and we can all be friends and everyone will live happily ever after....
