people have been scare mongered about china for so long theyve just absorbed the racism into their bones, half this comment section is just "tiannemen square!" or "winnie the pooh!"
If you think ppl on HN or elsewhere aren't racist against the actual Chinese people, you are just incredibly naive.
People have been talking about the Chinese like automotons of the government with no agency of their own for a long time now. However it's the same for all of humanity. In China in the Mao era, the slogan was to free the Western capitalist society from repression. It's the same old talking about enemy camp and assigning no free will to the people.
All this is to say, people here don't think of the Chinese as equals. That is the real core of racism, not about saying something against the protected race of the day.