tldr: they hire up labor unions and some civil groups, if not western-backed NGOs to do the hatchet job... and a little bit of social media disinformation campaigning

This stuff and their experience, their apparatuses for it is why I'm not cocky that China can just do what it's currently doing and Africa is guaranteed in its corner next decade. The US has a decent chance of sewing enough terrorism, chaos, military coups, juntas, color revolutions, etc to block them and result in a win condition for the US where China is effectively isolated with Russia and a few others and we end up in a cold war 2.0 situation of camps with the US controlling significant amounts of the global south, either outright or preventing them from getting too close to the anti-US camp. Oh there will be interaction, it won't be like the US will push out all Chinese brands or investments but they'll keep the countries hostile, obedient to US sanctions, that kind of thing.

All the US talk about fear of "disinfo" that you also see from Europe is because they are actively doing this shit to shift the ground out from under the feet of China and they're afraid of their enemies doing the same eventually and preparing their defenses early.