I would be very surprised if Chinese leadership isn't extremely cognizant of the necessarily short term thinking forced upon corporations (quarterly/annual earnings progression) and politicians (re-election) in Western democracies, and putting a massive amount of strategic thinking into how to best exploit this without attracting too much attention. Neither the corporations or politicians are going to be particularly motivated to draw attention to it, and public concerns on individual issues like this are typically ineffectual, I think they will be able to get an absolute massive amount of mileage out of this weakness.

Honestly, I think the West's best defense is young otherwise powerless people on the internet making memes mocking the irresponsible behavior of people in power.