2w ago

Xiaohongshu user shared a compilation of rumors circulating China about the US.

Lol. Lmao even

66 comments

It's not an exaggeration that US propaganda is insanely powerful.
As someone who has never been to America, growing up the only thing I had to judge American life were sitcoms where the "average Joe" was depicted as having a gaint two story house and having a ton of expensive shit on a single income.
It wasn't until Malcolm in the Middle that a non-rich family was even depicted as the norm.
"We were saving that money for our kids college" always confused me as a kid though, my thought was always "But wait, what if they can't afford to save for college? Do that just not get to go? That doesn't seem right. That would be too unfair."
- Kids growing up watching Disney channel is the most powerful propaganda tool of the cia.
- It's just wild to me to think that, you know, the Chinese government is too fucking busy TAKING CARE OF ITS CITIZENS to even care to spread vile propaganda about the US like we do about every other country. We'll, maybe it's not "wild", because even if other countries fabricated lies about the US they would probably be accurate lol
- There was Roseanne, but I don't know if that was popular outside the US (ignoring Roseanne Barr currently and the "revival")
  
  it still blows my mind she used to consider herself a "socialist"
  
  I keep trying to think of who/what Roseanne is and my mind just starts playing the drum beat from Rosanna by Toto.
  
  It was around but I think it was before my time
- Also I never thought about how little media shows families realistically. But even then it's still a father raising three kids and providing for a stay at home wife which is....lol. Maybe it was doable pre-2008 though.
  
  Lois isn't a stay-at-home mother, despite having 4 children, she works part-time at a large pharmacy store and some other gigs. I believe it also talks about how despite having a college degree, she is unable to find better work due to long gaps of unemployment due to pregnancy and child-rearing.
  
  I mean its still possible but its like the person has to be petit bourgeois to make it. A business owner like auto repair or car dealership or (maybe) dentist.

Meanwhile, in reality, Joe Biden STILL owes me $1400.
- "Gave out tens of thousands of dollars" meant $30,000 divided among 300 million Americans.
  
  It's because he had to do all that student loan forgiveness for like... ummm... 0,01% of what he promised.
- I can't believe that shit, really. How the hell are there still people who haven't been paid? Because the tax system is such a pain in the ass or what?
  
  It's not because of some kind of bureaucratic error, it was an intentional failure to honor a promise. Trump sent out checks for $1400, and Biden promised checks for $2000. When he made it into office, he decided that his actual promise was to bring the total to $2000, and he sent out checks for just $600.
  
  It’s not an error, the correct amount of money was paid out. Biden just lied about how much money it would be then lowered it later

Not rumours so much as people just watching American movies where everyone is upper middle class. This is how most of the world imagines the US
- Whenever I watch tv with other people now I like to point out class in the show. Most shows are petty-bourgeois where everyone is a small business owner, particularly american shows though.
  
  Yeah, I remember looking at Gilmore Girls and thinking "the entire class divide here is upper middle/lower upper vs Upper Class, loosely elided by the main character slumming it as a maid for a year before her employer realised she was "one of them"
- Yeah this is basically a summary of the living conditions of the Simpsons family
  
  Which were lower middle class when it came out. Plenty of plot lines revolved around money being tight.
  3 kids, 2 cars, a house, all on one salary these days? Unthinkable.

fried chicken is a dollar if they mean per wing

That third one is true for most of western europe. Not america. But I suspect it won't be true for western europe for much longer, starting with the UK and Germany when AfD get in.
The rest are bs.
This just demonstrates that propaganda through treats is the strongest form of propaganda because that's where the Chinese have gotten all of these ideas, the depiction of american lives in american entertainment products. Entertainment industry products should be a priority focus of any leftist state's propaganda machine. Television, movies and videogames.
- Oh yeah, I'm an American and I WISH that any of these were true
  
  The fact that there wasn't one negative "rumor" really shocked me. My impression was that the entire world thinks of this country as a joke of a hellhole
  
  Sorry to break it to you but everyone thinks of your country like a movie set in a 1990s high class suburb.
- That third one is true for most of western europe
  Immigrant workers are definitely exploited more than 40h/week in western Europe, and unpaid extra time is also plaguing most new hires in consulting and financial office jobs.
  
  Yeah that's fair. This is why I chose "most" rather than just saying it is true for those here. Generally speaking social safety nets are what keep these total hours down, people can (usually) claim enough to survive, meaning that they can actually just be unemployed rather than forcing upon themselves absurd hours just to avoid homelessness. These nets aren't always easily accessible if totally honest about circumstances though, and they're not accessible to various migrants or those without documents.

My dad
People in China
still thinking it's the 50's
- Love the fried chicken myth in there along with fair wages, affordable housing, and government subsidies

Be the type of American the Chinese think you are
- But that’s too expensive

What's even the point of the great firewall if they are getting propagandised like that anyway?
- Actually it was mostly to develop local tech industry and be able to enforce laws against American tech products; which considering China was able to leapfrog ahead to create the US' most popular social media app I consider it a rousing success.
  
  Is that the real reason? I've never heard that.

and 4. are true for sucdem Finland, but even here number 3 is slipping away fast now and 4. is only partially true on the sanitary pads (only done in some places).
This reads like the list of what the US advertised to be many decades ago.

rumor
life in america is good, actually
- Beyond Belief: Fact or Fiction 21st century edition
  Premise: 2 income family doesn't have to resort to selling plasma to afford baby formula
  Jonathan Frakes: Not a chance, we made this one up

I don't believe anyone thinks that in 2025.
- It could've been a joke, but there are hundreds of posts on there with users comparing Chinese and American society and the Chinese people are constantly shocked at how most of us live. I almost can't believe this lol

Is amerikkka even amerikkka if borger is not cheap
- In AmeriKKKa you can reach up and pluck a borger right off the borger tree
- Then amerikkka is no more 😎

damn, it always surprises me how much staying power US propaganda has
- Right? Literally all of it is so positive, yet all of our propaganda against China is so vile. Gives a pretty good picture of how much the Chinese government cares to brainwash peoples perceptions of the country even though their propaganda would be totally correct lol
- The Utopian legends of Omelas inspire the whole world.
  
  doesn't ursula k. leguin have a story about "omelas"? or does it predate her story/book

1950s
1950s
1950s
free meals are very nascent trend, idk about "napkins" I'm assuming you mean pads.
Only true if you're counting unemployment checks or PPE loans.
Man Kissinger really fucked the US hard
- You see on TV where kids get their shitty meals in a school cafeteria? The food is shown as bland, the cafeteria is usually used to establish cliques/groups like jocks/nerds/geeks/Asians within the school or Edward Cullen sparkling in the sunlight or setting up for a food fight or something. But they rarely, if ever, show the students actually paying for the food they get, hence the assumption.
  You see dads go to work in the morning roughly the same time as the kids, finish work, maybe get a beer at a bar before going home. Or go home then go to a bar. The wife is rarely seen working full time if at all. They live in a 2 storey house with a furnished attic and large yard. They have time for trips to national parks or money for carnivals or flights to Hawaii or whatever.
  US pop culture is a stronger propaganda machine than Eglin Air Force Base or the Pentagon.
- They did mean pads/tampons, yes. This shit is so sad, this seems close to normal standards of living elsewhere. I've known my country sucks ass but it never feels any less disappointing

MFW Chinese state propaganda literally makes capitalists look good by comparison.

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