China kneecaps all US companies inside of China. Most US companies are banned outright, and the ones that are allowed to operate inside the country are forced to be majority owned by a Chinese entity.

It makes perfect sense to me why the US Government would take that stance. I don't agree with it, but it makes sense. Even if a US based company is tracking user location or audio or whatever privacy concerns, a couple letters with a government stamp on it can get the US Gov complete access to all that data. That's not the case for Chinese tech, and the Chinese government can do the same trick of gobbling up all that available data from companies in their jurisdiction.

Or I guess to put it another way, if you're dragnetting basically all possible user data from your citizens and non-citizens, wouldn't you assume "competing" countries are doing the same thing?

Maybe China should stop kneecapping their own tech by injecting backdoors, layering hidden circuitry into motherboards, and harvesting US and EU user data for whateverthefuck their end goal is.

I mean, I get it, "poor put-upon China!", but let's be honest here: China needs to stop fucking around, lest they find out.