[ericmay]

I think protect against it is different than banning it. Think about it like this, a protection would be having a source label that the content comes directly from the Chinese Communist Party. In that case you still have access to the content, but you know who it is coming from.

I think it's also been clearly shown that disinformation campaigns (which can include ideological disinformation - capitalism bad, Chinese communism good) have a real effect.

To your more broad point about China I think the issue that is at the heart of so many complaints is that the Chinese Communist Party doesn't engage in competition with free ideas. In a sense, they are saying, Western ideals can't compete here, but we will export ideas to the West and see how many we can win over.

I'm willing to bet that (and this was the whole point of us opening up to China in the first place) if China didn't censor or block Western companies, then we wouldn't have this same issue. If the Chinese were exposed to "Western propaganda" and Americans were subsequently exposed to "Chinese Communist Party" propaganda due to free-flowing of ideas then what's there really to complain about? Most Americans would surely see this as a fair exchange.

I think it boils down to this:

"They get to do stuff to us, and we can't do stuff to them, so let's make it so they don't get to do stuff to us unless we can do stuff to them".