> To be fair, that’s a frequent complaint from the US Right, too.
How is that being fair?
In the US it's a meaningless opinion and doesn't represent the cultural beliefs of an all-powerful dictatorship that has ruled the nation for multiple generations.
Coming from the CCP or its cultural proxies it's a de facto cultural dictate. A US conservative might think children shouldn't be playing video games for more than three hours per week, and that's largely an opinion without any consequential power behind it (no matter who holds the opinion). In China, if Xi or the CCP proclaims they think something is bad or XYZ should be, it's a specific threat/warning about what's going to happen, it's a roadmap of how they plan to forcibly mold the society.
A common opinion of a broad and disproportionately (because of systematically unequal representation) politically powerful faction is not “a meaningless opinion”.
But, more to the point, in the mix of pro-authoritarian cheerleading and anti-Communist denigration directed at China from the US Right, the accusation that China has a “dying culture” and grabbing on to any possible grounds to support this is a recurring part of the latter. So when the utterance to which that import is being ascribed is one about Chinese culture that is also a frequent refrain about US culture from the US Right...
I wouldn't put the US in the same category at China, but the US is not that far ahead either. Take a quick look at the attitude to gay rights for a start.
How is that being fair?
In the US it's a meaningless opinion and doesn't represent the cultural beliefs of an all-powerful dictatorship that has ruled the nation for multiple generations.
Coming from the CCP or its cultural proxies it's a de facto cultural dictate. A US conservative might think children shouldn't be playing video games for more than three hours per week, and that's largely an opinion without any consequential power behind it (no matter who holds the opinion). In China, if Xi or the CCP proclaims they think something is bad or XYZ should be, it's a specific threat/warning about what's going to happen, it's a roadmap of how they plan to forcibly mold the society.