[notahacker]

Counter point: lots of people are just very, very passionate about their country and have even less sense of perspective on social media.

I remember well over a decade ago a student wrote a comment piece about the PRC in my UK university, which had a large Chinese student population. It was a fairly bad comment piece that felt like the student in question was angling for a slot at one of the UK's very right wing tabloids (funnily enough the student journalist is now a well-respected commentator at the FT) but its fundamental point was the fairly uncontroversial observation that the Chinese government isn't democratic and has very different foreign policy priorities than the West. It's possible, of course, that some of the outrage on the threads below the article on the website from people apparently incapable of distinguishing between disparagement of government and insults to ordinary people was orchestrated by a higher power, even though English student media probably isn't top of the CCCP's list of priorities now, never mind in the early 2000s.

But a lot of the hysterical commentary about how deeply offensive and discriminatory it was towards Chinese people that ended up in the print edition came from named people who were actually overseas students at the university.

People being willing to spend their free time manufacturing the same outrage or enthusiasm others receive full time incomes for manufacturing isn't exactly a uniquely Chinese thing either...