Communist-run China sent a thousand grains of sand to irritate and hamstring the West. But the biggest irritant continues to be the CCP which deployed the entire spectrum of excuses to combat the damage from the database release that implicates it:
Someone, somehow, leaked a database of two million CCP (Chinese Communist Party) members, including many who are living and working in the West. The database was up to date as it also included current employment. China quickly responded in several, often contradictory ways. China denounced the bad behavior of whoever was responsible for stealing and publicizing the date. China also insisted that the database was of no practical use to foreigners. Finally, China insisted that the database was a fake, created to embarrass China.
I think they covered all their bases, no?
I still have hope that increased prosperity will destroy the CCP. That was the original hope of Western cooperation. And it might not be wrong except perhaps we were too optimistic about how long that would take. And I have hope in part because of this fascinating look at communist logic in China:
Currently CCP membership indicates someone who is trusted by the government and is subject to regular, or special scrutiny by the government to regularly confirm loyalty and reliability.
The CCP message is that your trustworthiness requires even more scrutiny than other people? My, the Uighurs must be in a super secret high-level elite within the CCP by that logic, eh?
I've mentioned that China is hard at work building the Beta version of Dystopian Surveillance Police State 1.0 in restive Xinjiang province (somewhere in that data dump). But the features are being built everywhere in China. Not even jaywalking or how much toilet paper you use is beneath notice. This should scare the Hell out of people. Remember that even here almost all of us voluntarily carry around devices that can record what we say and where we go 24/7. No way that would be used against us by companies or our government, right? Right?? Tips to Instapundit.
Maybe the trusted Party people will start to worry that all they have worked for is potentially forfeit from a state that has the power to treat them like Uighurs with a snap of the finger over any transgression, real or imagined. After all, these "trusted" Party members are well aware that membership is a license to get rich through system corruption. What happens when the Party is a threat to the wealth?
Check the internal security budget if you doubt the Party's fears.
But if the CCP is vulnerable to the wrath of the newly affluent that the Party clearly fears, surely it is now time to turn off the spigot of Western cooperation--whether active or by ignoring the CCP's espionage and human rights violations--and let those potential revolutionaries feel the pain caused by their masters in Peking.
Biden won't restore Western cooperation with China just because Trump highlighted the threat, will he?
UPDATE: Killing the goose that lays the golden eggs (tip to Instapundit):
The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has re-awoken to a profound truth: Rich, secure capitalists are the natural enemies of authoritarian regimes. In a hybrid autocratic-capitalist model, capitalism is the means to generate wealth, but power is the end goal. Successful capitalists naturally begin to demand that their personal and property rights be protected from authoritarian fiat. Capital in the hands of entrepreneurs is a political resource; it poses a threat to the implementation of centralized plans.
Realizing this, the CCP has begun to assert control over the private sector by “installing . . . Party officials inside private firms” and having state-backed firms invest in private enterprises. In the absence of civil rights or an independent judiciary, “private” companies have no real independence from the government in China. Dissent and demands for civil rights are a threat to the regime and will be crushed.
See how trusted these state-sponsored capitalists are? The "private" sector will now be obviously and directly controlled by the CCP. One would think the West could exacerbate and take advantage of this new tension.
