It's theoretically, morally, and historically important to strike a distinction between the CCP, 'China,' and the Chinese people. The CCP's efforts to portray itself as synonymous with the other two must be rejected. But don't confuse that with what the public actually believes.

Gathering an accurate sense of Chinese public opinion, *especially* on an idea as core as this, is obviously extremely hard. But the bulk of people don't draw a hard distinction between the public and the party.

How they see it, in the same way as most people see complicated relationships, is inconsistent, messy, and shifting. What they think of as 'the Party' is equally so, even for party members.

There's lots of reasons for this. One is that party activity is deeply woven into everyday life - and there are 90 million members. You're probably not in it, but your uncle or cousin is. Another is that the propaganda about how the party saved China starts aged five.

People can also strongly dislike the leadership, or the top leaders, or this generation of leaders, or their local leaders, or the guy who runs the Party cell *they're in*, without broadening that to make a clear distinction about 'the party' as a whole.

Yet equally, there's a distinct minority of people who *do* make this distinction and have very strong feelings about it that they'll tell foreigners about! But they are, entirely naturally, over-represented abroad, especially in the people talking to politicians.

in particular, when presented with a choice between 'a hostile American government' and 'the Party' most people are going to pick the party every time. There are steps the US could take to make this *less* so. Trump is not taking them.