A flurry of tweets from Chinese diplomats refer to the event as a “so-called” democracy summit, while a Russian political commentator writing in a state-run Chinese newspaper compared the US initiative to “a mistress of a brothel teaching morale [sic] to schoolgirls.”
That the media blitz is coming from official mouthpieces — and not shadowy bots and trolls —reflects anxiety over US efforts to rally support for democratic norms and potentially isolate Beijing and Moscow in the process, experts on authoritarian propaganda tell CNN.
“[China and Russia] see this as an opportunity to…
