I think the fact that Russia could not keep togethet its most promising dance team is enough to show its difference from the Chinese system. Zahorski-Guerreiro is another example of a team that came together largely on their own, having to fight (and cross international obstacles) to prove themselves (not without state help, but also not formed or wholly supported by it). So is this practice unique to China? That alone is enough to raise red flags. If a forced partnership or breakup of one is so rare that only one country in the skating world practices it, one has to ask why, and the reason is that it violates the heart and spirit of the skaters. And why is that? Because it is forcing them to be intimate together and to try to become "two as one" -- when in fact it is a relationship where an older and more powerful party, simply grabbed the other as if she was standing in a brothel window and broke up her successful partnership with someone else completely against her will (and possibly her previous partner's too, as, if some here are correct, his career just went from promising to the dust bin).
I am not trying to romanticize pairs partnerships. But there are not too many jobs where the partners spend hours alone together every day, hold/are held by the crotch, tell each other what to eat or not eat, travel around the world together, put each other's lives in their hands, literally, on a daily basis, and have as their overarching goal to create the impression of two as one, a romantic ideal. It is a unique job that requires commitment of body and spirit. Sure, there have been battling pairs and dance teams who were able to set aside their differences and work professionally together with great results (Castelli-Shnapir, Hurtado-Diaz) and there have also been such teams who split because of those differences (Castelli-Shnapir, Hurtado-Diaz). Not unlike a marriage. But the members of those teams chose to stay together and they chose to split. That makes all the difference. People are not robots or slaves.
These partnerships are obviously not identical to marriages or romantic relationships. I'm making an analogy, given all the factors above. If it's not helpful, ditch it. I am using it as shorthand to show why these CSA actions were human rights violations, IMO, and should be banned by the ISU.
How insane would that be?! So Sui was looked at as a potential partner before they chose Yu?! 
