When you’re in the belly of the beast, it’s easy to miss what’s going on outside. I don’t think it’s one sided, by any stretch.

It's true. my perspective is unavoidably limited by being in an imperial core country, but is there any evidence for how China is conducting a propaganda war against the US (or at all) anywhere near the same volume or scale that the US is against China?

Like, nobody in Saudi Arabia or Turkey or Israel or even Ukraine really takes the US propaganda seriously. They’ve got their own internal propaganda that is far more compelling, and it’s often diametrically opposed to the liberal democratic line.

Yeah, I agree. But that's what I was getting a about the western propaganda being mostly designed for their respective domestic populations, it's not produced for the sake of the common folk of non-western countries. Is the US even attempting to make propaganda directed at the populations of Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Israel, or Ukraine? They don't need to, since for the most part, those who rule in those countries are in alignment with US interests anyway. The liberal democratic line exists (once again) for the population within the core countries themselves. Like, the US doesn't give a single shit that Saudi Arabia is a theocratic monarchy. Ukraine? Vassals of NATO, of course their internal propaganda is in line with the US. They would never even think of siding with China over the US and despise China anyway for not siding against Russia. Israel can't exist without the will and favor of the US, they are a massive military outpost for the west in the middle east and are autonomous only so far as they are willing to be more openly fascist in how they go about doing what the US wants them to do anyway, the US in no way needs to produce propaganda to influence them. Turkey does at least have some differing interests than the US, but they're still a NATO country and so far haven't had the reason or will to rock the boat in a way that is pro-China and anti-US.

I think it is a mistake to think Chinese businessmen and bureaucrats are simply beyond bullying and swindling.

Oh believe me, that's not a mistake I'm making. But as has been said many times, business interests (owners of private capital) in China are on a leash held by the state, in the west it's the other way around. I don't doubt that Chinese capitalists would swindle just as much as any other capitalists, but they aren't the ones calling the shots, the CPC is. And the CPC has repeatedly demonstrated that they only want to do fair, equal exchange, mutually beneficial economics with other countries. They don't need a massive propaganda machine to convince their trading partners that this is their agenda since their actions over the last couple decades are convincing enough, hence the quote you posted: "Every time China visits we get a hospital, every time Britain visits we get a lecture."

The incentives of a communist country are fundamentally different from a capitalist state.

Absolutely.

This allows Chinese diplomats to exercise techniques that NATO states do not have the political tool bag to deploy.

I guess I'm not sure what you're getting at here. Techniques like equal exchange?