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Very poor analysis. China already has a domestic spy, and secret police apparatus in every corner to keep just any, but highest seniority officials on the leash, not only ones making dissident faction, or not.

I cannot imagine that anybody seriously researching China never knew of that.

And I greatly doubt that just any benefit could've been extracted by US spies from getting hand on near 99% Chinese officials who don't know anything, and don't decide anything.

China's political elite is just few hundred people, and they were always surveilled by the state ceaselessly.

You should read the Foreign Policy article they reference instead. https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/12/21/china-stolen-us-data-ex...
I did it 2 days ago.
Did you disagree with the FP reporting?
Not in spirit, but say China doesn't need any "data superpower" to make US spies to work their pay.

I'm 100% certain that China has many more spies in US than vice versa, and that America haven't ever penetrated into serious high up Chinese elites, whether they were corrupt, or not because of Chinese secret police.

There are credible reports of ‘serious high up Chinese elites’ families seeking advice at the Swiss embassy in Beijing during the 1989 upheaval. If that dynamic still exists, they don’t necessarily need to be compromised by insiders to have information leak to American intelligence.
>99% Chinese officials who don't know anything, and don't decide anything

Basically. But I think "long-term thinking" implies grooming was suppose to eventually develop into useful assets if corruption culture persisted. Even if unlikely. Hence one motive, likely small but still significant - few dozen execution of CIA assets among million+ disciplined by CCDI. Along with "notable professionalizing of the Ministry of State Security" implying domestic counter-intelligence was previously lackluster, likely at lower levels. At least my experience in the 90s. Dinners with gossipy staff from JingXi. MSS officers chatty at weddings. One would hope opsec has improved since.

I just want to make this political science point absolutely clear without ambiguity: when an illegitimate (non-democratic/non-consenting) regime engages in "anti-corruption" they are doing nothing more than purging disloyalty to the whim and power of the Leader. Nothing more, nothing less. Period.
This is often the case. It's absolutely not always the case. Undemocratic political systems don't even always have power concentrated in one person, and empirically here officials compromised by the US were caught up as taking bribes and removed from the system. Empirically too, the process was also used to drive up public support.

The data was also shared with other countries as it helped them uncover foreign CIA spies, which shows that the program certainly had a counterintelligence purpose.

Such total conclusions are very rarely true. Here, they aren't.

> Undemocratic political systems don't even always have power concentrated in one person

This is absolutely correct, which frames my point in an even worse light. The whims and power of the Leader are the whims of subordinates to the leader, who are superiors to further subordinates. Western continental philosophy, Heidegger, Arendt, Levinas, all framed this concept under the term "The Totality." It's fascinating.

Framing Western philosophy on Eastern geopolitics might give you a fancy picture. It lets you feel comfortable, but it's a departure from reality.
Reality appears to contain giant statues of a European Jewish Socialist heralded throughout Beijing. If the East was so proud of some original political system held as "superior to democracy" -- why does the ruling regime employ the same tactics to hold power over the affairs of men as documented by a 16th century Italian?

Politics might be flavored and seasoned by locale, race and culture, but the meat is all the same and always has been. To conclude otherwise, or make China a "special case" is probably racism. It also denudes the notion of universal human rights.

Power struggle has been the same since the dawn of human civilization, regardless of where you are. As you said, meat is all the same.
Since when is "democracy" the golden standard for every culture and every country? Politics are all about trade-offs, among efficiency, centralized power, poverty to solve, nationality and defence, and many other aspects. Democracy can be beneficial but it sucks at so many things, and it's normally short-sighted. Is Singapore, with less democratic system, not as "legitimate" as the U.S.? Your opinion sounds like a 5-yr old talking about politics.
I'd like to apologize for simply not using the phrase "non-consenting." Including the word "democratic" in my point is probably far too convoluted. The definition of a legitimate regime (going back to Locke's treatise on government) is one that has consent of the people. Democracy (as a whole system in its many diverse forms) and elections (as part of that system to sample the people directly), and self-government itself: where you and your ordinary civilian neighbors are physically involved in the governance of your locality, rather than cadres sent from the central government -- the confluence of all of this is legitimacy.
qv Brazil: https://www.ft.com/content/0f31cdb4-b1e1-11e9-bec9-fdcab53d6...

Of course, it's entirely possible that in many places everyone is corrupt to some extent, so who gets prosecuted is simply an expression of the factional power struggle.

Can’t tell if you are being ironic or not. But it’s worth throwing in there that the democratically elected leader Donald Trumps pledge to “clean the swamp” has left the government controlled by family and loyalists. And while consensus is that USA isn’t a highly democratic country, it is typically lumped in with others higher on the democratic index, so it the whole anti-corruption=Purging might just be a general rule not something limited to non-democratic countries. Unless you count USA as being completely non-democratic, which seems a hyperbole, at least unless the current administration refuses to step down and carries on through a coup.
> it’s worth throwing in there that the democratically elected leader Donald Trumps pledge to “clean the swamp” has left the government controlled by family and loyalists

He's certainly put on display just how horribly the system functions and it's clear he's more of a symptom than a cause of the dysfunction. There wasn't even a pretense of a good faith effort to try to cooperate and start cleaning house.

By virtue of beating Clinton and easily taking the nomination as the Republican candidate goes to show how hollow both parties were already. The void of competent and appealing politicians - that represent anyone - was begging for someone like him to enter the scene.

And that's why it's funny to watch all the horrified "decent" politics nerds of the establishment try to find the perfect insult or scandal that would destroy him - they don't get why he was elected. He was elected as an insult to Washington. Trying to insult or pick apart the insult is useless.

To everyone who enjoyed this article I recommend reading Michael Pillsburys book "the hundred year marathon". Michael Pillsbury is one of America's leading experts on American-Chinese foreign policy. It was truly illuminating.
Is Navalny free today? Can we get him to crank call the CIA and Chinese Officials to work out the exact numbers involved?