I live in a surveillance state. I don't really like being surveilled. Big companies share data between each other, and it influences my ability to do things like obtaining a house, or getting insurance.

The Chinese have nothing to do with my data. Western companies, on the other hand, can make a good deal of profit from data in aggregate, and don't care if it harms other people.

The Chinese stick to their own people (and what they believe to be China). Western companies, on the other hand, will track everyone on the globe, without any consent at all: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clearview_AI

I don't use Chinese software; it's just that the person's claim isn't nearly as insane as you're making it out to be. They're acting more rationally than you are, here. It's not Chinese scaremongering or anti-anti-Chinese scaremongering to acknowledge that China can't really do much to the average Western citizen in aggregate.

I suspect this is true to some degree but I also think there is no shortage of Chinese nationalists and anti-Americans (including Americans) who by default, upvote anything that has a pro-China agenda and downvote anything that has anti-China agenda.