The author resorts to simplistic meta-narrative, which is long dead as the deep chasms and internal problems in the US political, cultural and economic life are being exposed by the (mostly) alternative media that grabs much more viewership and follow up than the traditional corporate US media. Under these conditions, it is quite difficult (and increasingly a losing battle) for the US elite state apparatus and its soft power arms such as media and entertainment to continue to promote a false sense of US moral integrity or supremacy.
US at the moment, from a much higher economic and political conditions, is similar to India in terms of its self-denial of deteriorating existence and what remains is a yearning and an almost religious belief in a self-crafted notion of soft power ideals that they assume the world keeps watching in awe. Nothing can be far from such truth. The US is loathed by more people than before just as India is loathed in its own neighborhood. There is no soft power involved in both cases. In fact, India is simply a laboratory case to study failed governance.
If there an iota of soft power, that's because the glamorous that the US material and military power has generated over the decades, which usually lasts longer than the material ground itself. Mostly, the illusion of soft power lasts longer than the material grounds that have generated that soft power. This is probably what we are observing today. The US is losing material ground on daily basis and it has already begun to translate into a loss of ground in information making and story telling. Thus, the article in the OP would make sense even as near as ten years ago, but no more.
Whether the result of the handy job of Mr. Putin or not, but, Mr. Trump has already injected the virus into the heart of US media/information/cultural power. In fact, the level of moral decline in US media, entertainment, politics and military happened to be worse than the most radical anti-US theorists could imagine. I do not think no practical positive energy can come from this.
As for China, again, it is a broader reality than the OP's narrow dualist mind-set which should have been cast aside wince George Bush announced "Mission Accomplished." The fossilized ideas brought up by the author suggests that it is (incredibly so) possible for one to survive on archaic ideas and it can find a place on a US state media. This, by itself, is a sign of intellectual decline.
The US media should be able to come up with fresher ideas because the lines purported repeatedly cannot create the desired effect, but, in fact, increases the repulsiveness of US/Western ideas.
China knew from the very beginning that ideas were built on solid material grounds. Hence, it worked hard, at the cost of many negative externalities and painful public policies, to establish such formidable material ground on which state and national power is built. Hence, China's stability and the expansion of its ideas. As
@Cybernetics brilliantly put, this is the difference between the stability of the US and instability of weak countries. Not because US ideas are better, but because US material ground is firmer.
Tunisia experienced a revolution because a policewomen slapped a vendor. Just several weeks ago, US police killed a man begging on his knees for his life. This also explains why it is relatively easier to destabilize countries like India as they stand on very weak material grounds and the ideas they purport have no resonance in the citizens' life.
The NYT author blames China for being historical, dialectical, materialist and pragmatic. Values that his own government has already lost to a large degree. The US is still a formidable enemy. But it has long lost the ability to make another USSR out of China. They better work not to repeat the UK experience.
