I'm probably replying to some anti-lib community, but it's really weird coming from "/c/all" that nearly every comment has some sort of jab at "libs" for a topic that I would never associate with a political spectrum.
Fyi I'm not affiliated with any political "side" and I'm not American, so it just seems weird to be.
We are an a communist instance. American liberals (which includes both of their major political parties) are very imperialist and love to push propaganda about their enemies. It's why public opinion for China took a nose dive in the last 10 years. Why Iran is so evil, but nobody thinks about Kuwait. Why Tiananmen square gets so much attention but the white terror receives none. China's the enemy, and "Taiwan" is an innocent friend that needs protecting.
Being communist, we are anti-imperialist, and hate the war mongering propaganda that the liberals seem to lap up. They see this as being conspiracy theorists or contrarian. Hence the conflict about things like this.
Okay, I understand the narative, and agree that western culture has cemented certain opinions on history. But where does the liberal part come in? Maybe I'm misunderstanding that bit. On US social media there is this whole lib vs republican thing going on. In this case does lib just mean "not communism"?
Liberalism is the ideology of capitalism. Thus "liberal" is everyone who support capitalism, that is basically starting at socialdemocracy and everything right of them - which in western countries mean literally entire political mainstream.
To Republicans, "liberal" means communist/vegan/trans/Black/Millenial/baby killers/etc.
To Self-described Liberals, "liberal" means Non-authoritarian socialist/centrist/real patriots/pro-science/pragmatic/etc.
Basically, don't go on US social media to see political terms being used with any significant amount of accuracy. Most Americans are so politically ignorant that, even to many of those that describe themselves as politically-minded, these labels have essentially lost all concrete meaning.
We understand the material conditions and how that drives not only ideas, but change as a whole. For example by carefully looking at the material world around me, I can safely confirm that Xi and Biden are two different people.
Bit of a late reply, but why is it so hard for you to imagine any leader caring about their people? (This sounded more accusatory than I meant, that's not my goal, it's more of a "why is it so hard to imagine a caring leader?" not a personal attack.)
Most of us in the west have never actually had a leader who wants to help anyone other than the stockholders of big companies. So the concept of leadership that actually cares about people is entirely alien to us.
To look at it another way: Do you consider yourself a good person? And if you were in a leadership position somewhere, would you try to do the best to help out the people under you? Good people do exist in the world. Not necessarily saying Xi is one of them, just that it is possible for a leader to care about people. Power doesn't corrupt, corrupt people are attracted to power. But they aren't always the ones who get it.