Secretary of State Mike Pompeo's recent criticisms of China's early response to the coronavirus pandemic have flustered Chinese officials, according to U.S. officials and analysts, following a series of rebukes that Beijing regarded as an attempt to split the Chinese Communist Party from the majority of Chinese people.

"That’s the CCP acknowledging that they view that issue as a third rail, and the U.S. should accept the propaganda framework that the party is China and China is the party," Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation Executive Director Marion Smith told the Washington Examiner. "The fact that the regime is so absurdly sensitive about this point reveals their existential dependence on a facade of legitimacy."

Smith’s assessment came in response to recent Chinese complaints that the State Department is “attempting to drive a wedge between the Communist Party of China and the Chinese people.” That allegation came from a senior Chinese diplomat who began by protesting Pompeo’s crackdown on China’s state-run media operations in the United States but shifted to boasting about Beijing’s response to the coronavirus pandemic and the Party’s membership rolls.

“Faced with the horrific spread of COVID-19, the CPC and the Chinese government put people's life and health as the first priority and left no patients behind,” Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying told reporters Friday.

“There are now over 90 million CPC members, which is about 27% — more than a quarter — of the total U.S. population,” she added. “Such a large number of party members, together with their family, relatives, and friends, constitute inseparable ties between the party and the people.”

That’s a sign of “arrogance,” though perhaps not anxiety, according to American observers. “I don't see it so much as being worried as it is arrogance, but it does indicate that some of those comments have hit close to home,” a senior U.S. official told the Washington Examiner. “It is absolutely critical to the survival of the Chinese Communist Party that they maintain the illusion that they somehow embody and speak for the Chinese people.”

The novel coronavirus began as a public health crisis in China’s Hubei province but turned into a domestic political problem following the death of a doctor who had been rebuked for warning about the outbreak. Local intellectuals declared that "the key point is freedom of speech" and blamed the political system for the spreading contagion.

“It does so out of fear,” the Hoover Institution’s Michael Auslin said last week while discussing the coronavirus censorship. “It knows that were the truth to fully come out, there could be a revolt or an uprising or something that would put at risk the existence of the communist party.”

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has echoed the domestic rebukes of China’s censors repeatedly, along with President Trump's national security adviser, Robert O'Brien. “The CPC comes from the people and serves the people,” the Foreign Ministry spokeswoman replied. “Certain U.S. politicians, including some in the State Department, are just wasting their time and energy to try to drive a wedge between the CPC and the Chinese people.”

Smith, who replied that "there is a wedge between the people and the Party — always has been," wouldn't have it any other way. "The Communist Party never enjoyed democratic legitimacy in China and has maintained power only through the daily exercise of violence against ordinary people," he said. "U.S. diplomacy is about the interests and values of the American people, and we’re calling B.S. on the CCP’s exhausting and dangerous propaganda."