Comment by jollybean

"had they not made sweeping changes to their economy and assured the world that they would compete on a fair playing field, rules that they still (mostly) have to follow today. "

This is really quite false.

Rules are broken all the time, they are difficult to arbitrate, and often they are not.

The CCP requires foreign entities to surrender critical IP, then hand it off to a state-backed competitors, they don't allow full ownership of local companies, there's direct political interference including the requirement for all companies to directly hire CCP members as oversight, and if it's important enough, to have the CCP right on the board.

All of this in addition to the death by a thousand cuts the system can make for foreign competitors via local bureaucratic requirements at every level.

This applies not only to commerce but critical institutions such as WHO which are directly compromised by China (i.e. not allowing any material investigation into 'lab leak origins' etc. etc..)

The OP presented the situation very clearly: there is no way in any scenario that China would allow an American company to have a TikTok like app used by large swaths of the Chinese population, controlled by the US.

Neither would Russia.

On some level, that kind of thing is a bit understandable, I don't quite mind if China would not allow 'Facebook' to be the #1 communications tool in China, that said, it should be reciprocal.

And for other things, like high-speed rail etc. China has been grabbing IP using leverage that never should have been allowed.