Of note in this supposed cyberwar between US and China is Unrestricted Warfare, by Qiao Liang and Wang Xiangsui (Beijing: PLA Literature and Arts Publishing House, February 1999)A study of the most active of twenty identified Chinese state hackers: Exposing One of Chinas Cyber Espionage Units
You are on solid ground when you say culture trumps politics.
In China the state re-educates its journalists and party officials, censors Google, beats Falun Gong women, western province Muslims, Tibetan monks while the people without jobs want jobs and the people with jobs want consumer goods.
In the US the troika of government-media-academia drone on about Western sin, the sin of ownership, the sin of faith, the sin of self-reliance, the sin of self-protection--a fit, a tantrum by a thwarted elite on the threshold of imperial power.
While the people retain their values and value their freedoms and power in Constitution, faith, arms, family.
Sunstein and Chomsky to the contrary notwithstanding, the dog food is not selling because the dogs don't like it.