CCP wants recognition and equal status for its values. If we accept that bargain, surely it could make the world more stable. But you can't trust the Party not to push for more. Not just b/c of the nature of the Party but b/c that’s what great powers do when it suits them. 1/

But it’s especially dangerous given what we know now: the CCP is willing to impose costs, bully, and threaten smaller countries. Why should we believe it would be any different if we made such a deal, empowering the CCP’s ‘democratic dictatorship’? 2/

But more importantly, we cannot accept the CCP's values as equal without diminishing our own. Whether or not we fall short of these professed values, often acting in totally contradictory ways, is beside the point. 3/

Values are aspirational, imperfect at all times by definition and by virtue of the fact that our cultures and related perspectives evolve in parallel to those values. Countries are hypocrites, unavoidably, as are the humans who live in them. 4/

We are all fundamentally victims of circumstance, which requires undesirable compromises needed to help ensure peaceful and prosperous lives. So we deal with despots and murderers and thugs. 5/

We should continue to deal with China. Unquestionably. That's one of those circumstances that we just have to accept - China's too big to ignore. 6/

But to accept the Party’s values as equal? To legitimize the literal antithesis of our core values - rule of law, freedom of the individual, freedom of thought, freedom of speech, etc., - is to abandon them. 7/

There is a line. And it must be protected at all costs. Or we shall find ourselves ‘a face under a boot, being stomped on, forever’. End rant.