This should be part of any journalist's PRC 101 even before stepping off the plane."But it is only in the past few months that I've become aware of the popular idiom translated as "Kill the Chicken to Scare the Monkey”."
Of course the Party often ends up killing the entire flock of chickens and mowing down all the monkeys too (*), just in case one of them might pose a challenge to the Party's dictatorship.
(*) Ordering troops to point their barrels at hapless monkeys seems to translate well into the Zhongnanhai gang's lingo.