I don’t disagree that there is a soft power component, but it is strange in my opinion to narrowly focus on China when there are demonstrable harms from american allies and none so far as I can tell from China.
In my view, people getting exposed to China and seeing them as human will help prevent the war our capitalists are cooking up.
It is true that China controls the conversation around e.g. Tienanmen square (an event that is not accurately portrayed in U.S. media), nor the Xianjiang "genocide" that Biden concocted for which there was zero proof (we know what a genocide looks like in Gaza, the most tightly controlled, censored, and surveilled territory in the world, it is also laughable that the U.S. would pretend to be the champion of muslims while enacting a genocide of a population that is predominantly muslim and putting a self-proclaimed crusader in charge of the department of war).
However, the "harms" of exposing the U.S. population to Chinese influence would be to tamp down the population's aggression towards China. I cannot see a single problem with that.
China is a democracy, but it is not a liberal democracy. It represses the right wing and allows democracy within a window defined by the communist party. I think we would be hard pressed to call America a democracy at this point. We repress left wing viewpoints that gain traction and allow "democracy" within a right wing capitalist framework. Funnily enough, this is not a symmetric mirror. Right wing viewpoints are oppressive and minoritarian. Left wing viewpoints at least purport to represent the majority of workers and China does in fact increase the material well-being of its population by leaps and bounds year-over-year.
If you are more ready to call China a democracy than the United States, there's too much ground to cover in this conversation. There's a lot to unpack there.
It’s been shown years ago that the Chinese government does what the people want much more often and closely than the US government. CCP inside the party is very democratic too, much more rigid, but it is bottom up.
In America, democracy is defined as liberal democracy to preclude other forms as legitimate. Liberal democracy means theoretically that anyone can contest for political power regardless of political viewpoint. This means that anyone from a monarchist, to a fascist, to religious fundamentalist, to a liberal, to a communist and anything in-between may run in elections. In practice, various devices are used to ensure there is a window of acceptability, and that fire is primarily directed at the left. I used to think at least fascists and monarchists would also be precluded, but I have been shown to be wrong. In this sense, outside of tight parameters, liberal democracy has inherent contradictions that can easily destroy itself and transition to a different point of (usually temporary) stability, such as has been seen in France when the 1st republic became the French Empire under Napoleon, became a republic again, then switched back to monarchy, and so on and so forth.
I'm not sure what the phrase used for what China is doing is (well, there is "Socialism with Chinese Characteristics"), but as an outsider, my understanding is the idea is that a very broad portion of the population should be involved in the communist party and that democracy should be encouraged within a framework of marxism. Nonetheless, several opposition parties are allowed to run in elections though parties too far to the right are excluded. Still, these opposition parties can be fairly critical and given that China is using a significant capitalist mode of production, some elements of capitalist ideology are allowed. It is a little confusing to be sure.
> several opposition parties are allowed to run in elections though parties too far to the right are excluded.
Just today, China sentenced Jimmy Lai, after preventing such left-wing democratic figures from running for office, because they opposed China's right-wing authoritarianism. Not a great time to make this claim.
In my view, people getting exposed to China and seeing them as human will help prevent the war our capitalists are cooking up.