Surely it took all of "us" long enough to divine the trends discussed / highlighted in the Economist (and underscored by the Mintz raid in Beijing)? More generally, this is not a problem exclusive to any one democratic country. Anyone who has been following the "slow roast" of the Canadian government in recent months understand this well. News reports offering details of alleged political interference by China broke in the news media last November--and the allegations have been flowing fast-and-furious over the last month. ...although, maybe "fast-and-furious" is a term best used to describe the ferocity of efforts by the Prime Minister and his minions to deflect attention away from damaging (and difficult to prove) allegations about interference in the Canadian political and electoral system (and which the Liberal Party of Canada in particularly seems distressingly entangled in).