I think many of us expected popular support for the Communist regime to drop over time - but we're seeing the opposite, and that's gravely concerning.
But particularly for minorities in countries nationalism provides an easy way for self-identity. You'd want to be able to be proud of some specific fact about yourself and unfortunately nationality is a particularly easy way for minorities like the Chinese (in the US) to do this.
And so this easily leads to American raised Chinese to jump on board supporting their home country. The alternative is to admit that their special home country needs advice from the US. Perhaps they weren't properly (or weren't in the US long enough) brainwashed to accept democracy, but something is causing them to think that they understand the complex policies better than the rest of the developed world simply because they lived there once.
I also know a Chinese international student in Canada for college who insists that I am brainwashed by the west. I think that's a pretty bold statement since it pretty much implies that I was too stupid to distinguish the noise from the truths when I learn shit, since the fundamental difference between the democratic world and the communist world is that in the democratic world the truth is always there no matter how much shit is piled on top of it and in the communist world they just pile shit on your face and actively try to hold the truths out of reach.
I think with the silly gaffs like the little girl who was lip syncing at the olympics that the CCP is still tripping over itself on universally backwards policies, and that all this is not just a case of the west trying to assert its cultural differences onto China.
What's interesting is how agile the CCP has become. We call it 'communist' but it no longer resembles any of the Marxist ideals we usually associate with it. They react quickly and have been using capitalism/modernization/nation-building as a very effective carrot. This isn't the old stagnant hard-line Soviet communism by any measure.