Yup and this, even after Trump campaigned against China through 2015-16
Though I think this needs more analysis. I can think of at least one pandemic that was blamed on China in early 2020 which might be the actual start of the decline.
That would be my guess also, and is probably the simplest explanation. The US media beat the “Chinese virus” drum very, very hard and a lot of people still seem to believe that China is mostly to blame for COVID. It’s at least possible that this was part of the same effort to discredit China both to the Chinese and to the world broadly, and that COVID was just a “happy” coincidence for the already existing propaganda campaign.
Yup and this, even after Trump campaigned against China through 2015-16
Though I think this needs more analysis. I can think of at least one pandemic that was blamed on China in early 2020 which might be the actual start of the decline.
That would be my guess also, and is probably the simplest explanation. The US media beat the “Chinese virus” drum very, very hard and a lot of people still seem to believe that China is mostly to blame for COVID. It’s at least possible that this was part of the same effort to discredit China both to the Chinese and to the world broadly, and that COVID was just a “happy” coincidence for the already existing propaganda campaign.