This to me is the correct answer. A lot of times in war it's not about logic or reason, it's about emotion and feeling. Throughout Chinese history, a leader is only "legitimate" or dare I say, have the Mandate from Heaven, when they have unified the country under one banner. It is a stain on their authority that there is "rouge" state outside the CCP's control. They will do anything to unify their country for national pride.
I'm curious, if you're interviewing at a company, what's the best way to figure out of the lead/team has this balance? What kind of questions could you ask without sounding like you're trying to be lazy?
FWIW, I saw Tim Cook in Pac Heights a few months back just walking around. There were two "guys" in plain clothes in front and behind him on that Saturday morning. I was able to say "hello" and he was nice. I imagine there are probably others monitoring his security that I couldn't see also.
I don't have a specific answer to this as I'm not a trained historian. However, didn't we see this with the invention of the printing press back 500+ years ago? That also dramatically increased knowledge distribution and probably lies and mistruths. How did society handle that?
This is fundamentally different. Arthur Anderson was an auditing firm and did accounting. Their selling point was to be the "source of truth" for their client's books. What's that confidence is lost, then no one would hire them for their work. McKinsey, as a management consultancy, doesn't have to be a "source of truth" and offers perspective, which can be neither right or wrong. Management makes decisions on if they want to take McKinsey's advice or not.