> The rule now is US companies can operate in China if they obey the same rules in China that Chinese companies have to obey in China, and Chinese companies can operate in the US if they obey the same rules in the US that US companies have to obey.
China practices the maxim of "we don't have a rule book, but don't do anything that makes us angry" to enforce a maximum of self censorship on its operators. Heck, Chinese services are actually required to break rules in ways that would violate America's FCPA laws (it is impossible to operate in China and not break either American or Chinese laws).
> FB is not in China because China requires social media companies to turn over the identities of posters that post things the Chinese government does not like.
FB would probably setup a JV in a heart beat if the Chinese government would let them (letting the JV handle the data and interaction with Chinese regulators, and keeping it completely separated from Facebook in the rest of the world). The issue is that China wants to know the identities of people outside of China, like in Taiwan or Hong Kong, and Facebook would be breaking Chinese law not revealing them, but would be breaking other country laws revealing them. Again, it is simply impossible for Facebook to operate in China without breaking either Chinese or other country laws. So they pick the rest of the world.
I think ByteDance actually did the right thing with TikTok. It would be impossible to have a service that legally works both in China and outside of China, because Chinese rules would require breaking other country rules, so they did two services instead. But unfortunately, I guess the Americans don't think they are organizationally separate enough, and that the Chinese government can still exert pressure on ByteDance to reveal TikTok data, not just Douyin data.