Plenty of orgs are surely trying to do that actively for all sorts of reasons. No idea how successful they are, probably tough to tell.
The spookiest thing of all is that most of the effect might be genuine grassroots action. Picture a Chinese Nationalist poster here, genuinely independent tech enthusiast and happens to know enough English to participate in an English forum. Perhaps they are genuinely annoyed by what they see as westerners meddling in their internal politics, which there is a long history of. Perhaps they flag what they see as clickbaity stories likely to lead to a bunch of China-bashing out of genuine annoyance. They don't need to be paid or leaned on by the CCP at all, they just actually feel that way.
Dammit, now I sound too apologetic about it. Sigh...