China Media Project

There is loads written about this. Wikipedia has a category page for it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Factions_of_the_Chinese_Communi… Painting a great picture of party unity - and national unity - is a key propaganda goal of the CCP, so if that's what you see then they are succeeding. In practice, the party has almost 100 million members so naturally it is composed of people with many different points of view, although those differences are rarely expressed openly and they're all still shaped by the overall political and educational environment of the PRC. It's generally accepted that Xi Jinping has used his anti-corruption drive to wipe out rival factions, and one unlikely conspiracy theory is that he somehow orchestrated Bo Xilai's fall from grace in 2012 so he could take control of the party. The whole thing could provide material for stacks of palace intrigue thrillers... and in fact it did, which resulted in the Causeway Bay Books disappearances of 2015. Gotta control that narrative, after all. If you're interested in the propaganda side, I recommend reading China Media Project: https://chinamediaproject.org/ If you just want to know about the party maneuvering, all the usual thinktanks (CSIS, Brookings, CFR etc) publish a ton of English language content.

It's not a single "they". Yes, Wuhan/Hubei provincial authorities did the usual Chinese thing of covering up bad news so the Eye of Sauron over in Beijing wouldn't hear about it, and there's a great/depressing read about why over at [1] (TL;DR: big Communist Party summit). But once Xi/Sauron did catch on, their response -- total lockdown, building new hospitals, etc -- was both draconian and massive on a scale unimaginable in most democracies. Compare with (say) the shambolic response to Hurricane Katrina, where pretty much the opposite happened: pleas by local authorities were basically ignored by the central gov't until their hand was forced. [1] http://chinamediaproject.org/2020/01/27/dramatic-actions/

Human rights tend to complicate these things. USA and every other developed country would surely be able to achieve the same under similar circumstances. It's worth reading http://chinamediaproject.org/2020/01/27/dramatic-actions/ and watching https://youtu.be/7OEqybiGdaA for first-hand experience of the incompetence and evilness of their government and how they've been handling the situation.

When I've heard people question or say there is no rule of law in China, usually it's followed up with how their court system isn't independent of their political system by design, not that it's lawless/a free for all for the CCP. Not that I disagree with a large chunk of what you said either, but it's just not hyperbole that China has no rule of law per a common definition of the word because of party and worker judicial supremacy. Rule of law definition: the restriction of the arbitrary exercise of power by subordinating it to well-defined and established laws. Three Supremes: http://chinamediaproject.org/2010/11/12/three-supremes-%e4%b8%89%e4%b8…

Chinese citizen in US. throwaway account for obvious reason. At this point CCP simply does not care about their image, they're in full process of reverting back to Mao-ism and cultural revolution. Cases in point: - 赵薇 (Zhao wei), a very famous and popular actress in China, was recently scrubbed from the internet. Her work, including movies or tv series she produced, were scrubbed from streaming platform like Tencent. Her follow feature on Weibo was disabled. Pages that used to mention her now have blank space where her name used to be. This is part of a broader crackdown alongside tech, education, effeminate men, celebrities, etc. Some of these efforts have to do with reducing the foreign culture effects that could lead to discussions about western ideals like freedom or democracy. - English is deemphasized in classrooms, even in Shanghai. What follows is now 'Grandpa xi Jing ping thoughts', for students as young as 6. The thoughts comprises of 14 principles that promote communist ideals. - An unknown blogger named Li Guangman (李光满) posted claim that revolution is in the air in China, with profound transformation to be felt by all. https://chinamediaproject.org/2021/09/01/profound-transformations/. This post was spread by official party media websites, no doubt in support of the current CCP agendas. - All this is in the backdrop of xi jing ping attempting to get his 3rd term next year. That will cement his legacy as the most powerful man since Mao, and his…

Qwen has been broadly aligned to give positive messages about China in English. https://chinamediaproject.org/2026/02/09/tokens-of-ai-bias/ An Analysis of Chinese LLM Censorship and Bias with Qwen 2 Instruct https://huggingface.co/blog/leonardlin/chinese-llm-censorship-analysis

Apparently, the official CPC is pro-stablishment, unsurprisingly, while the common CCP is anti-stablisment https://chinamediaproject.org/2023/03/30/ccp-or-cpc-a-china-watchers-r…

See the date of publication, and the dates of events there: https://chinamediaproject.org/2020/01/27/dramatic-actions/ Now take the traveling of people working in (fast) fashion, and where those clusters are into account. The first Italian wastewater study took samples between February and April. While the timeline of the 'dramatic actions' article suggests intervention and meddling with data by politicians by at least early December.

The CCP literally sits on the board of ByteDance. ByteDance CEO Zhang Yiming has stated on the record that he will ensure his products serve to promote the CCP’s propaganda agenda. Companies that refuse, such as Alibaba, are stripped of their power and their leader (e.g. Jack Ma) literally disappear for months. Read more about what happened with WeChat as well: https://chinamediaproject.org/2018/04/11/tech-shame-in-the-new-era/

Although I can relate to the sentiment, and the history of US interventions is not one that's seen favorable today, I think that you are underestimating Xi's position right now. China has become much more oppressive internally. And if you don't care about human rights for the Chinese population, then maybe you care about the fact that the Xi regime asserts eventual control over foreign reporting [1]: “48-character policy” (48字方针), an all-dimensional vision of comprehensive control across media platforms and bridging the domestic/international frames, articulated through 12 four-character phrases. ... Party domination of the message as reflected in both domestic and international public opinion" [1] https://chinamediaproject.org/2022/05/03/developing-online-media-contr…

The idea that ByteDance is not beholden to the Chinese state is contradicted by the founder's own words. https://chinamediaproject.org/2018/04/11/tech-shame-in-the-new-era/

The CEO and cofounder has gone on record (https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2019/12/05/tiktok-leader-sch… linking to a parent source https://chinamediaproject.org/2018/04/11/tech-shame-in-the-new-era/) pledging that he'd run the company in accordance with socialist values and the principles of Xi Jinping Thought. The degree of financial relationship is unknown and probably unknowable, but it seems clear that ByteDance feels obligated to behave how the government wants.

In 2018, Bytedance CEO released a public statement after an incident with the CCP censor. In that statement, he promised that Bytedance apps would strengthen "the work of Party construction" and "socialist core values" etc. https://chinamediaproject.org/2018/04/11/tech-shame-in-the-new-era/ I don't know how Bytedance as a company can serve CCP interests AND claim to be independent of CCP interference at the same time. TikTok is a good product, but it may not be a safe product. More on the dystopian practices of Douyin (TikTok in China): https://twitter.com/Izzy_Niu/status/1280906443273768960 https://twitter.com/JoshuaDummer/status/1280877750245453828

I skimmed that page, and all I found was some group stating that placing the country name before the party name is somewhat racist. Which I suppose could be an artifact from when Lenin and Stalin were trying to incite world revolution through the Comintern, when the communist movement wanted to eradicate all borders and make the whole world communist. Also in your link is a reference to the official CCP website, where they themselves (or so the talk page claims) state while they prefer CPC, CCP is also acceptable. So it seems to me that this is a nothing-burger, where some activists are fighting on behalf of a group that doesn't really see the reference as a slur in the first place. Based on this link, CCP was even the original abbreviation, which was changed to CPC as late as 1943 due to pressure from Comintern/Stalin: https://chinamediaproject.org/2023/03/30/ccp-or-cpc-a-china-watchers-r…

Assuming good intentions from TikTok is pretty ignorant. ByteDance's other app, DouYin, is unambiguously a CCP controlled tool that censors dissent and their CEO ingratiatingly and apologetically dedicated the company to "Strengthening the work of Party construction, carrying out education among our entire staff on the “four consciousnesses,” socialist core values, guidance of public opinion" in a public statement [1]. Suggesting that TikTok is leaving MAU on the table to keep users' data safe is laughable when ByteDance's other Party-controlled app, DouYin, is remaining in Hong Kong with a captive audience (as helpfully confirmed by Global Times [2], a well-known mouthpiece of the Party). To even suggest that it's a sign of good intentions would ignore extremely important current events and ByteDance's self-proclaimed devotion to the Party. As we speak, the Party is aggressively assimilating Hong Kong into the mainland by banning public expressions of dissent, controlling educational curriculum, and yes, good old censorship. Forcing HK residents to use only Party-controlled tools that the rest of the mainland uses, like DouYin made by ByteDance, only serves to further the "work of Party construction". TikTok is political because it is wholly owned by a self-proclaimed political entity: ByteDance. It's disingenuous to suggest there is no reason to assume malintent when ByteDance has a history of censorship and propaganda in its flagship app: DouYin. Your glib dismissal of…

So, suppose you're Supermicro. When some CPC official comes around to tell you to make your technology a little easier for the intelligence department to access, you're going to do it. Companies in China (especially those in the tech sector) have to keep close ties to the government, and most of their leaders are members are of the party. You don't GET to be a multi-billion dollar tech company* in China without toeing the party line [1] [2] [3] The issues around regulating food safety and vaccines that you mentioned are irrelevant. * Foreign companies must operate Chinese subsidiaries to run their operations in China. [1] https://www.wsj.com/articles/beijing-pushes-for-a-direct-hand-in-china… [2] https://qz.com/1102948/chinas-communist-party-is-all-in-on-the-power-o… [3] http://chinamediaproject.org/2018/05/02/tech-firms-tilt-toward-the-par…