>turn their guns outward
Different kinds of calibre guns, so far PRC has not brought out the big ones nor firing with intent to kill. PRC foreign propaganda is still overwhelmingly boring "tell china story well", distinctively different from Russian troll farms. They're fundamentally different attack vectors. Both also influence diaspora, as does every country. There's just more Chinese abroad with perspective of both systems, and frankly the western narrative is frequently blatantly misinformed that most don't see defending the homeland as promoting illiberalism. Most are shocked at how quickly liberal minds can be brainwashed despite free media. Still, actual current day analysis shows PRC is doing very little relative to other players contrary to these headlines. Maybe still developing capabilities, or keeping options in reserve.
>counter-measures
IMO this is just an asymmetry between liberal and illiberal systems that can't be bridged without the former adopting tools from the latter - which by all accounts is happening, i.e. the China Initiative is Mccarthyism / red scare redux. Kill chicken to scare monkey works everywhere. Manufactured consent like this article overblowing actual state of PRC influence ops which is continuation of coordinated anti-China reporting since Trump. As always fight propaganda with propaganda, but ultimately, diaspora / immigrants in western countries have freedom to root for their homeland. This includes pro-CCP PRC nationals, and even the ones who renounce PRC citizenship after naturalization.
>As far as coordinated pro-CCP behavior on HN
My general feeling of the "coordinated pro-CCP" phenomenon is that there are many pro-China diaspora in western platforms whose threshold for engaging anti-China pieces is to downvote and move on. Some spaces (like tech) have more Chinese than baseline, so you'd expect to see the effect multiplied. IMO most do it for themselves for tribalism, which is natural behaviour.
I don't subscribe that there's anything ironic about PRC nationalists hoping over GFC to "enjoy" free speech. VPN access is cheap, use not strictly enforced, accessing western internet is not some verboten activity like many westerners envisions it to be, it's entertainment. It's like using VPN to circumvent geofenced media, except for nationalists who like to troll. Reality is there's much more Chinese with English fluency and hopping the GFC is much easier than vice versa. The amount of westerners who have mandarin fluency and ability to comment on weibo is miniscule. And they don't need to since lots of pro-China diaspora / tankies on western platforms to troll, whereas Chinese nationals have to actively seek westerners over GFC to troll. VPN is just a premium subscription to participate in another cultural war. Culture wars are sad.