Fair

Not saying that’s what happened here. I’m asking: if someone did that, what would you consider it? Academic question, decoupled from China or any other country

What would you call the selection of friendly people to sit around the leader to create photogenic moments? “Hey Mr Albenese, here are some friendly people for you to chat with”.

Fair callout. I suspect we pretty much agree then beyond debating semantics of where you draw the line between staging and framing.

Did you? Xis approval rate has nothing to do with that photograph

The approval rate of the politician does not enter into the fact that any photo that looks like that is marketing and involves some level of staging or artifice

Anyone who disagrees with this along the lines of “Oh but Trump/Obama/Xi/Trudeau/Macron/Stalin/Hitler is really loved!” then you should put get off the Internet until you grow a bit.

Any photo like that from any significant nation is, on some level, staged.

This person gets it.