As I have watched places like x.com and Reddit it’s pretty clear to me there is some sort of weird propaganda thing going on promoting the Chinese models and casting shade on the big American models

Because they are free.

The Chinese labs are giving us open-weight models that we can serve with hardware that we own or control. Some of those models are extremely capable, judged by frontier or at least near-frontier standards.

The American labs are giving us endless FUD and unaffordable DRAM.

So, yes, there's a lot of room to 'promote' Chinese models and 'cast shade' on domestic models.