CCTV's Short Video Mocking Trump Backfires in the Comments Section

Chinese state media outlet “Xiao Yang Video” came up with a so-called “creative idea” by using AI to generate a short video showing U.S. officials working on an assembly line in a factory. The video posed the question: “Trump is pushing for reciprocal tariffs—is this the future that people like Trump want?” However, the video was met with backlash from netizens, who criticised it by saying: “The work you’re mocking is exactly what Chinese labourers do every day.” The video has since been deleted. (Screenshot from the internet)

[People News] Recently, the CCTV short video account "Xiao Yang Video" tried a "creative" stunt by generating an AI-made clip that depicted American officials—Trump included—working on a factory assembly line. The clip was accompanied by sombre background music, with a caption that mocked: "Trump's administration pushes for reciprocal tariffs and revives manufacturing—this is the 'bright future' imagined by AI after he ‘wins’?"

The idea was clearly to satirise Trump’s push to bring manufacturing back to the U.S., showing top officials doing manual labour. But the effort completely backfired in the comments section.

Netizens weren’t laughing—they were outraged: "The job you’re mocking is the very same work millions of Chinese labourers do every day." "Who are you actually ridiculing here?" "So you do know this kind of work is exhausting and painful?"

Simply put, the video was meant to mock the U.S., but ended up exposing China's own social reality—using a condescending tone and trampling on the lives of grassroots workers to make a joke at others’ expense.

Many commenters put it bluntly: "Don’t you guys always promote that ‘labour is the most glorious thing’? And yet here you are, turning ‘working in a factory’ into a punchline. If Americans work in factories, you call it ‘decline’ or a ‘grim future’—so what about the countless Chinese doing the same today? Is that the ‘lowly reality’ in your eyes?"

This isn’t "satire"—it’s a "reveal."

It exposes a deeply ingrained attitude in the Chinese Communist Party, never spoken outright but long embedded in its mindset: a master-class complex. On the surface, they preach that hard work is a virtue—but deep down, they see those who actually do manual labour as somehow inferior. They tout "manufacturing power," but if someone really ends up working in a factory, it’s seen as a "failed life." Publicly, they call on everyone to "roll up their sleeves and work hard," but privately, they treat factory workers as a joke.

At the end of the day, this wasn’t just CCTV "losing control of the narrative." It was a moment where they accidentally let slip their internal hierarchy of contempt. Turns out, state media talks about respecting labour—but in their hearts, they treat labor as something to laugh at.