No, I'm not suggesting the media has been good at resisting the xenophobia angle. It has not. That said, China is at the far, far end of the spectrum. It is a military dictatorship. Full stop. Any comparisons between that and the US (or the EU) seems to be taking the conversation in a not entirely useful direction. (For what it's worth,* I live in a house with three Chinese immigrants.(*Not much!)). It's like saying, oh, if we deregulate banks we're going to end up at Animal Farm. Nobody wants to be Piggie!
Every education system ever devised seeks to be normalizing. The American system of public education was founded explicitly to manufacture better citizens. To a certain extent, this goal has been lost and to our detriment. As a result our citizenry is ill-equiped. We can't even get half the people to vote so I'd say something has gone sideways somewhere. But it's not about advocating specific positions on specific issues but about teaching how to consume information and make helpful choices in a complicated world.