Yeah this takes the goddamn cake. Do they think Chinese people are stupid and that they don't actually know what the Chinese or English names for those countries are? Like, they see some post in English and they go "damnit, I don't know what the name of that country is!" And if they saw that in the dictionary, would they actually say "oh, never mind, guess I was wrong!" This isn't George Orwell's fantasy universe where people in "authoritarian" countries actually believe in ridiculous logical errors like 2+2=5. This is reality. Where if a government, any government, does something this blatant, their people are going to call bullshit!

News flash, the majority of Chinese people, especially the younger generation, know some level of English. It's taught in school from the first grade, through primary, middle and high school, and onto university where it is still a mandatory subject for most majors. And the names of those countries are transliterations of their native names in Mandarin and English, so it's already pretty easy to tell what they are from context! No one is searching in the dictionary what those mean, and if they are, it's very unlikely that they'd even be reading English media as opposed media in their native language!

bruh

When the US says something. Libs: "It's freedom of speech!"

When China says something. Libs: "It's propaganda!"