Not that I want to give the communist party of China any ideas, but when will it learn that silencing sources of dissent can only be accomplished by removing the senses, disabling speech, the ability to write, to see, to be mobile, to think.  mao all ready tried to convert populations in China to human forms of machinery when he worked and starved so many to death with the policy of the great leap forward. A policy that wanted to change people's names to numbers.  What did China fail to learn from the stalinist policies such as The Holodomor and the soviet political pogroms of the 30's.  What part of, intimidation does not work, is the ccp failing to grasp?  

Here is a novel concept.  The issue is the inability of communism to separate itself from the horror of totalitarianism to hold onto power. Their incompetence is governing a population by intimidation to enforce compliance.  The problem is communism. History has shown that a controlled people can turn on a controlling government.