> Allowing a rival to push propaganda onto your children is foolhardy.

I don't recall historical instances where that was a major problem. The closest analogue would be the cold war, where US propaganda successfully got the USSR to switch to democracy (a move that, ultimately, was to the benefit of the people). The Soviet counter-propaganda was ultimately unconvincing and everyone agrees that Communism was a disaster - even the people who lived in communist communities as children.

It is too hard to come up with a 20- or 30-year propaganda campaign that has meaningful impacts, the results are fundamentally unclear because everyone will have different policies in 30 years. If anyone knew how to reliably change societies through propaganda we'd already be using that technique in the west to align everyone to capitalism instead of having the constant socialist regressions that keep cropping up.

Propaganda is effective for specific political decisions in the short term when targeted at adults. Over the longer term it has impacts that are hard to foresee and impossible to control, for good or ill.

> It has nothing to do with whether Chinese propaganda is worse than US propaganda.

It sounds important when you phrase it like that. Why listen to worse propaganda?

Well, no. It is good to listen to other people even if you think they don't have your best interests at heart. I can certainly see a security argument for restricting foreign media, but to get upset because literally one media source is owned by foreigners is too much.

The vague "obtaining potential advantage" is unreasonable. An advantage at what? China doesn't benefit from the US suffering, much like the US has actually benefited a huge amount from Chinese prosperity.

> Your comment here belies the benefit because at its core is the most dangerous assumption: I am too smart to affected by propaganda.

Quite the contrary; We're supposed to be affected by what we listen to. But I'm not smart enough to figure out what the Chinese think without going and listening to and reading things written by Chinese people and pushed by people with Chinese perspectives. We're not psychic and the Western media are also unreliable. Listening to diverse news sources is important. Particularly since the truth is often the most effective form of propaganda.

yes, but I think by your logic Hollywood movies are "propaganda"...

by making the main characters of a movie American, and giving them positive traits, you're 'obtaining a potential advantage' for every American that travels abroad is associated with positively portrayed fictional characters, or in biopics, historical characters.