Seven years later, Chinese President Xi Jinping and his wife made their second visit to North Korea.
Most Westerners have never been to North Korea.
They know almost nothing about its people, its education system, its daily life, its history, or how a country survives decades of sanctions, isolation, military pressure, and ideological demonization.
But in their imagination, North Korea already exists as a completed villain template.
Dark.
Backward.
Brainwashed.
Poor.
Disposable.
A cartoon state built for Western moral theater.
China has been placed into the same narrative machine, only on a larger scale.
Not a civilization.
Not a country.
Not 1.4 billion human beings with history, memory, labor, grief, ambition, and survival.
Just “the authoritarian threat.”
A giant villain with ports, factories, missiles, AI models, high-speed rail, engineers, and 5,000 years of civilizational continuity.
That is how Western ideology works.
First, it removes human complexity.
Then it replaces reality with a label.
Then it treats the label as evidence.
“Dictatorship.”
“Regime.”
“Threat.”
“Axis.”
“Rogue state.”
“Authoritarian bloc.”
Once the label is installed, no fact is allowed to disturb it.
If a sanctioned country survives, it is propaganda.
If its people are educated, it is indoctrination.
If life expectancy rises, it is ignored.
If it builds industry, it is militarization.
If it resists Western pressure, it is aggression.
This is why the West misunderstands both China and North Korea.
It does not study them as societies.
It consumes them as villains.