This, again, is a free speech issue. If your business truly have nothing to do with free speech (sorry, but iCloud and Microsoft 365 all had a free speech issue since they enable people to connect and publish), for example Amazon, no local partner is required. And Amazon has been there since forever.

Sometimes, even in a domain with free speech issue, you can have market access to China. For example, Steam is able to sell games in China since many years ago, even with their community page frequently blocked by GFW due to mostly unregulated user-generated content. They certainly can be cut-off: they rely on Alipay and WeChat Pay for payment. But this hasn't happened.

Oh, and Epic, GOG too.

> the capital requirements are incredibly high, corruption is through the roof, and when the local partner or the government rip you off, you absolutely will not have equal protection under the law.

While I indeed don't feel safe about the law protection. I wonder have you actually tried to setup a business in China? Or you are just repeating what you saw on Reddit?