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People think that because they understand how things work in the US, they understand how things work in China. That because in the US businesses have functional constitutionally granted protections from government overreach, that China functional constitutionally granted protections from government overreach. Which is completely not the case. China is essentially a dictatorship. With one leader of one party that dominates everything, kangaroo courts and disappearing family, the works.Having worked with a Chinese University and had a Chinese business as a client, I can attest that this is indeed the case. It's not essentially a dictatorship, it IS a dictatorship. Except it's not by one person, it's by a political party that has ingrained itself at every level of one's life in that country.
In the US, there is the government, there are private companies who don't interact with the government at all, there are public companies who don't directly work with the state but still have influence on the state (think large scale food providers or airlines or car makers), and there are public companies that sometimes can blur the separation line due to how ingrained they are with the state's infrastructure (for example, Lockheed-Martin or Microsoft). Sometimes any of these different types of entities might be asked to do the state's bidding, but they can refuse (in some cases) or negotiate, or get things in return (tax breaks, etc).
In China, there is The Party. That's it. Everything is intentionally an arm of the state, directly or indirectly. The Party controls everything and every action any organization of any meaningful size whatsoever is directly done to aid The Party's goals. The Party has a representative at the highest level of every major company in China, and said representative isn't just there to be in meetings, they are there to control the company to make sure said company is doing what The Party wants them to do.
Keep in mind that China's goals != The Party's goals....despite what The Party wants you (and its citizens) to think.
Jack Ma fucked himself off the Ant Financial deal because The Party representatives at Ant were also the heads of the Chinese state bank. He talked shit to their faces, so The Party decided that he was too big, so they took him to task and made him "donate" a few billion to The Party.
Imagine if Zuck told the government regulators to pound sand on national TV, and the government basically responded with "ok, well, you can donate 25% of your net worth to our political party, or the world will never hear from you again". That's China.