1. People who disregard everything about TFA, to remind everyone for the five hundredth time about <some unrelated crime by CPC>, and <why are we still trading with them>, and <can't we just build a wall around it>, and <the Chinese come here to steal all our things>. These posts, depending on how inflammatory they are, or what side of the bed HN woke up on, tend to hover slightly positive.
2. Green-named accounts speaking in... Non-perfect English, praising some aspect of China. These usually get downvoted to oblivion.
There's also a lot number of posts that express more-reasoned/more-on-topic pro/anti-China viewpoints. I don't consider them to be trolling, and I don't really care what colors the names of the people posting them are.
And while they may have a point, they're often off-topic whataboutism. I believe it's a natural outcome of gamifying discussions with imaginary internet point rewards. The first and most eloquent post that's congruent with the hivemind "wins". It's just human nature.
3. Instant whataboutism used, even if not appropriate or applicable. If you read about the directives of the 50 Cent Party or the old Soviet propaganda machine, this is one of the universal tools used to derail the discussion from the topic at hand.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whataboutism
https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2017/01/troll...
Now could this just be normal posters using whataboutism? Sure, but we all spend a lot of time on the internet and listening to arguments, it's basically the language of the internet at this point. And you can just get a feel when something is authentic and when it is not, like a bank teller when they get a counterfeit bill and they can tell something is not right.