International Travel Influencers are Selling Strawmen
„Chinese people are unfriendly.“ „In China there are a lot of homeless people.“ „Chinese cities are underdeveloped.“ „In China everybody is poor.“ „China is dangerous for tourists.“ Have you heard these claims? No? Well, pro-Chinese influencers claim that Western media is spreading them all the time.
This is basically their script: they start their videos with exactly these claims and then, in a completely unexpected twist, they show you the supposed reality. Of course, nobody is homeless in China, the people in the tents are just there for an exhibition, they show you „the cities of the future,“ they show you how friendly Chinese people actually are, how rich, and how perfect everything is. But then comes the warning: „Don’t believe Western media.“
The problem? Western media never told us that China is completely poor, that it lacks modern cities, technology, or development, or that Chinese people are generally unfriendly, or that China is a particularly dangerous tourist destination. This is a strawman argument used by pro-Chinese propagandists.
What these influencers are really doing is replacing legitimate criticism with false stereotypes that almost nobody actually believes. By first inventing a ridiculous version of what “the West” supposedly says, they can then easily destroy it and appear as truth-tellers. This trick creates the illusion that any negative report about China must be based on lies or prejudice. It is a manipulation technique that replaces discussion with emotional spectacle. The influencers act as if they are correcting injustice, when in fact they are building a stage performance around a false premise.
What Western media actually reports is that China is not a democracy, has no free elections, no freedom of speech, ranks low in the Press Freedom Index, is closely aligned with other authoritarian regimes, and has deeply problematic policies towards the Uyghurs and Tibet. There is no “Western campaign” portraying China as a backward, technology-poor country full of unfriendly people or as a dangerous destination for tourists. On the contrary, China’s economic and technological development is well known and widely acknowledged.
These propagandistic travel influencers use strawman arguments not only to portray China as a perfect country from the future while the West is supposedly “decades behind,” but also to discredit Western media and the West in general by disseminating these false arguments.
A strawman argument is when you accuse your opponent of holding a position he or she does not actually hold, in order to “prove” your own point. This strawman strategy among travel influencers is not only used by pro-Chinese influencers. We have seen it before, for example, when Westerners in Russia filmed supermarkets and said: “Look, it’s not empty, they have food.” Well, nobody ever said otherwise.
