* Tesla knows and has access to the identity of their chinese drivers and where they are traveling to, tick by tick.
* Tesla performs OTA updates initiated from their HQ in the US, directly to their Chinese drivers' cars.
* Tesla EVEN proposes to drive their cars automatically, without human intervention!
Why shouldn't China ban tesla?
Chinese government has banned countless things from the world for one reason. They believe those things will jeopardize their ruling.
They had banned fb, Twitter, bullied google, youtube, because if Chinese citizens criticize the government on those platforms or see the truth, they will have no good control. They fear their own people more than anything else. Do they care about people’s privacy ? Especially with that intense surveillance? Is any high tech data worth protecting if the data was stolen in the first place?
Will an electronic car jeopardize their ruling?
The US government/congress has one thing going for its ruling (and global reach): its control over all globally significant media platforms. The most recent example being that the congress could invite tech companies to testify before the congress and accuse them of political biases without much evidence ("why did Google censor conservative contents? My father can't see my political ads!"). If Tiktok were to succeed in the US, for the first time ever US lawmakers would not be able to exert influence on a social network with real reach to the US demographic. That would be terrifying to U.S lawmakers.
Separately, the comparison between China banning Google and US banning huawai, DJI, tiktok is moot: China set their (extremely authoritarian, no denying of that) rules, Google complied initially, censored search but decided it was too much and pulled out. In other words, regardless of the merits of the rules, China was applying the same rules to all companies. Google decided to not comply, others did not.
U.S. at the moment outright target specific companies, without specifying any rules being violated and in the process leverage its tech dominance in the private sector (app stores) to bully foreign companies to sell.
It's unfortunate that US has effective monopoly over tech platforms. Even the EU is toothless facing US in this space (GDPR).
You will see the difference.
I have lived in China till I was 20. I saw the difference.
There is no clear boundary between the good and the bad. There are shades of gray.
But there is certainly differences between North Korea and say Iceland.
Trump may be a rogue. But it takes a rogue to fight a bigger rogue.