The thing is that lends credence to your op theory is that journalists (albeit clickbait journalists that may not even be using their real name) have resorted to making up shit about China when there's already enough public shit to make people dislike them, the situation in Xinjiang was working for a while, but I think it became too Islam-centric for the general western public to care although among them it has become a 2nd Palestine of sorts; two years ago or so there was a viral story about socially-acceptable baby eating over there, which is obviously fake.

Another scandalous operation I'm surprised hasn't gotten steam is the way Chinese debt collectors are treating Zambians, but you can pretty much do anything in Africa and have it fly under the radar it seems, (Pygmy genocides, Central African Republic Bush War, slavery in Mauritania, etc).

If I were to put on my conspiracy hat, things like the social credit meme caught steam again because too much ire was being directed towards the average Chinese people and not towards The Party. This is of course ignoring that there is a lot of anti-US/western memes/stories (interestingly, a lot of it coming from the US, the fifth column there is strong nowadays).

In reality, it had a resurgence because the John Xina tiktok was popular and featured the credit check, people just found it funny in the context of an interactive check, similar to the "vibe check" meme. People aping what is popular is nothing new or particularly glowy. Journalists make up shit about everything they won't get sued for. Fear and ragemongering is good business these days.

Thing is, if you believe in this sort of thing, especially the Illuminati, then all powerful governments are farcical and the whole conflict is just for show.