He is right. US has complete power over people on their soil and basically in Europe and Asia as well. They do a LOT of extraditions of other countries citizens when they go traveling or to business trips from their citizenship countries.
China, on the other hand, does not seem to give a single f* about foreigners, only about their own citizens. Most people are not so are not really endangered even if chinese spyers do know what they handle on their phones. So in battle between US spyers/China spyers I'd better give my data to Chinese, if I don't have a choice not to share my data at all.
China, as well, don't try to make extraterritorial laws (like financial regulations), so it's harder to even be targeted by CCP if your are a foreigner.