"Propaganda is a form of biased communication, aimed at promoting or demoting certain views, perceptions or agendas. Propaganda is often associated with the psychological mechanisms of influencing and altering the attitude of a population toward a specific cause, position or political agenda in an effort to form a consensus to a standard set of belief patterns. Propaganda is information that is not impartial and is used primarily to influence an audience and further an agenda, often by presenting facts selectively (perhaps lying by omission) to encourage a particular synthesis, or using loaded messages to produce an emotional rather than a rational response to the information presented."

From: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propaganda

Take this account of propaganda in action:

'His village had become a ghost town, with fields dug bare of shoots and trees stripped of bark. For all his remorse and grief, he regarded the death as an individual family's tragedy: "I was 18 at the time and I only knew what the Communist party told me. Everyone was fooled," he says. "I was very red. I was on a propaganda team and I believed my father's death was a personal misfortune. I never thought it was the government's problem."'

Source: http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jan/01/china-great-fam...

Perhaps you should check again for research on effectiveness of Chinese propoganda:

try a google scholar search, this one came up quite quickly:

China's Propaganda System: Institutions, Processes and Efficacy
David Shambaugh
The China Journal
No. 57 (Jan., 2007), pp. 25-58

Or perhaps one about international propoganda:

"One option in particular is the use of information to adjust the public opinion of the Taiwanese people regarding unification. In order to achieve this goal, China has turned to its propaganda apparatus to exert its influence
over the Taiwanese media. China believes that by secretly seeping its message directly into Taiwan through its own local media, changes can take place from within giving more strength and credibility to the notion of unification. But is China’s strategy running according to plan? Recent trends in the national identity of the Taiwanese population might suggest otherwise. The purpose of this research paper is to analyze the patterns of the relationship between the pro-Beijing message of unification within the Taiwanese media and the trends of Taiwanese national identity in order to determine the efficacy of the propaganda’s influence as well as illustrate the possible implications of the findings'

From: Pro-Beijing Propaganda in Taiwanese Media Implications for the Future of Taiwan -China- U.S. Relations

http://academics.utep.edu/Portals/4302/Capstone%20Project%20...

To spell it out again: you aren't using the term propaganda as a word in anyway linked to its meaning. You have devised your own meaning with no grounding in its historic or contemporary use. I challenge you to find one other person who has ever use the word to describe what your are - failing that, perhaps put forward your own definition.

If identifying propoganda and the hidden agenda of someone is a form of propoganda. Then surely propoganda would be done openly and be formally introduced as propoganda - because that would help its claim. Propoganda is effective because people believe the lie and because the real agenda is kept hidden and secret - not because people expose it.

Advertising is not propoganda, but I will save that discussion for now.

I appreciate your balanced tone despite the obvious frustration that I am venting and don't mind letting you know I am feeling.

Can I ask you what your first language is?. I know thats personal, so don't answer if you don't want. I just feel like the cause of this misunderstanding might be that you have different core definitions for words than I do. Your definition of diplomacy as a form of management - for example.