Unfortunately when I recount the stories of friends who have been targeted, surveilled, threatened, and harassed by the CCP, I am often met with pushback: they were exaggerating, sensationalizing, making up stories because they are bitter, it can't be that bad for the average person, etc. This skepticism is incredibly naive. Just because you cannot imagine something being possible in your country does not mean that it is not already happening in China. "The Great Firewall" is hardly a fit monicker to describe the extent of what is happening in China today thanks to technology.

Strittmatter, a German journalist, repeatedly asks his audience to wake up to the reality of what CCP values, policies, and machinery do to the psychology of the individual. He comes with receipts to show the CCP's encroachment on every level of society on the national and international stage. It is fascinating, and hard not to admire the sheer scope of the streamlined political apparatus. (Incidentally, I remember being awed by the speed of the UAE's government—it's quite a thing to behold when you're used to the bumbling plurality of opinions and slow churning of a democracy).

I am trying to not take a fatalistic view of the path we are headed down, but it's hard. So many individuals, businesses, institutions, and governments in the West have already thrown their values and morals out the window at the first whiff of Chinese yuan. Our greed, not our naiveté and internal divisions as Strittmatter believes, will be our downfall.