To place Chinese state media on the same level of censorship as independent western media seems... disingenuous at best.

Western media being independent is a myth has been for the last 20-30 years specially when it comes to foreign relations. Most of the independent western media is sidelined which results in little or no spread of real news most of it is just propaganda of different political and financial interests. Go thorough this website is shows how much misinfo is spread by corporate media and different countries. But no main stream media picks up the stories or talk about it. https://www.disinfo.eu/

It looks like you fell for the brainwash.

There is no such thing as independent western media.

Western media censors by omission. And when they report on China, they only report on news that casts China negatively, in order to make the western world appear morally superior.

>China in the last 20-30 years has taken 700+ million people out of poverty so they must have done something right.

Their neighbors (taiwan, japan, korea) were lifted out of poverty even sooner, so I'm not sure whether this is indicative of anything. Your whole analogy reminds me of the how in a bull market it's pretty easy for any trader to make money, even though they might perform worse than an index fund or a monkey and a dartboard.

Why are we talking about “media” here? These are government reports of growth.

If you would put the same trust in economic stats reported by China vs Western gov’ts...well.

You’ve made this same comment before in other posts and comments about China, but there’s absolutely zero proof to back up your claim. If it comes from Chinese state media, it absolutely cannot be trusted, and since there is no way to independently verify it, we cannot assume that it is correct. Not even in the general direction of being correct.