>>487730Ok lets unpack this, the US wants to encircle China and keep it in a subordinate role, of providing labor-power for what they call low and medium value added economic tasks. Basically design and finance is supposed to happen in the US while resource processing and assembly is supposed to happen in China. That way imperial capital can extract imperial super-profits, and they can play Chinese workers against US workers.
While China accommodates US companies and lets them exploit Chinese workers, they haven't been doing that for free. China was technologically behind and this arrangement allowed closing the technology gap. The US got cheap labor-power and the Chinese got newer technology. And the Chinese are now caught up and capable of generating homegrown technologies too. The Chinese consider this a fair exchange where both sides benefited and now want to continue the trade relationship with the US but in a way where the Chinese also do the high valued added stuff like design.
The US will now proceed to try various schemes to knock China back down into a subordinate role (like what it tried and failed with Russia) and when that fails, the US will be forced to divest from imperial militarism and re-invest into domestic industrial production and all the other stuff like infrastructure etc.
You are correct about the propaganda method, it's trying to portray China as the
[insert political faction appropriate boogieman here]. And that's why the portrayal of China is so contradictory.
If you are listening to what the Chinese are saying, they plan on doing something similar to social democracy by the mid 2030s. That will be completed in the 2050s and by the late 2070s they will begin transitioning to communism which they think will take another 100 years to fully realize. So full communism in the latter third of the 22nd century. The 2050s date is also the time frame when the falling rate of profit bottoms out according to Marx's theories, so that time-table probably isn't a coincidence.