Why is the decoupling "depressing"? This seems to be exactly what the CCP is pursuing with an ever greater degree of enthusiasm. What I am surprised at is how this is not taking place similarly by U.S. companies still doing "business" on the Mainland and elsewhere. Put differently, I don't see how keeping things coupled, so to speak, is advancing much of anything, certainly not on the political level, and with ever diminishing returns with respect to commerce. Education? Perhaps this will finally force the CCP's hand to develop the country's abysmal post-secondary education system. From a China Digital Times story today, an excerpt with the link below:

"Four Tibetan monks were sentenced to up to 20 years jail in secret trials with no apparent evidence of criminal wrongdoing after a violent raid on a monastery in 2019, according to a report from Human Rights Watch, which calls for their release.

The raid, details of which the rights organisation says have come to light for the first time, was sparked by police obtaining a phone, accidentally left at a cafe, containing WeChat messages to people in Nepal and evidence of a donation to an earthquake relief effort.

[…] Four monks; Choegyal Wangpo, Lobsang Jinpa, Norbu Dondrup, and Ngawang Yesh, were detained for more than a year before being tried in secret, on undisclosed charges, in the Shigatse intermediate people’s court, and sentenced to “unprecedented” terms of 20, 19, 17 and five years in prison. HRW found no evidence the monks’ families had received sentencing documents, or that the defendants were allowed independent legal counsel. [Source]

The Human Rights Watch report describes the Tengdro monastery incident as a “perfect storm” involving Party loyalty campaigns, tightening internet regulations, and overlapping bureaucracies. Tibetan Buddhists are increasingly expected to ardently proclaim their love for the Party: one Lhasa monk recently told reporters that Xi Jinping, not the Dalai Lama, is his spiritual leader. New regulations have targeted previously tolerated financial and other contacts between Tibetans within the PRC and those living abroad. Finally, a number of bureaucracies have overlapping national security jurisdictions, leading to cascading repression as each strives to fend off potential accusations of laxity from higher authorities. Excerpts from Human Rights Watch’s 61-page report on the Tengdro incident show how these factors triggered the suicide of one monk and draconian sentences against four others for non-violent offenses of unclear criminality:

Immediately after the raid, a team of cadres began holding daily political education sessions with monks from the monastery and the village residents. The education sessions focused initially on “Loving the Nation, Loving Religion” and on “opposing separatism.” During the sessions, the cadres made statements denouncing the Dalai Lama.

Three days later, at 8 a.m. on September 7, 2019, just an hour before the daily political education meeting was due to start, the Tengdro monk Lobsang Zoepa took his own life. It is not known how he died or whether he left a note, but his death appears to have been a protest against the treatment by police and cadres of his fellow monks, family members, and other villagers. Close contacts say that Lobsang Zoepa, besides being beaten during both the raid and then during interrogation, had been forced along with other villagers and monks to attend the daily political education sessions meetings following the raid. These contacts also reported that cadres had shouted at and abused Lobsang Zoepa during those meetings."

https://chinadigitaltimes.net/2021/07/draconian-sentences-for-tibetan-monks-after-monastery-raid/

The speech? Eye-rolling bombast, deserving of burlesque theater.