The Chinese government carefully controls foreign access to its market already (unlike the US), and already bans quite a few foreign companies from operating on the Chinese Internet (again, unlike the US).

I imagine Apple already complies with whatever they need to comply with in order to make the Chinese government happy.

> 'cos we're all equal, no?

No, we absolutely aren't. The Chinese government has ensured for decades now that foreign businesses have only tightly controlled access to the Chinese people while Chinese-owned (i.e., easily controllable by the Chinese government) businesses have advantages not given to outsiders. (And those outsiders need to open up a Chinese subsidiary that is majority-owned by Chinese investors/companies.)

On the other hand, most Western countries have given Chinese companies near-unfettered access to their markets.

If anything, this TikTok ban is actually making things more equal, if only by a tiny bit.

I'm pretty sure Meta apps, at least Facebook, are banned in China still. Apple complies with the Chinese government and removes banned apps otherwise it can not operate there. I think even Tiktok itself is banned in China, there is a special version just for the Chinese market so their consumers can not see global content.

Chinese government demands a lot from US companies. Google left for a reason.

Apple is quite a special case since iPhone ecosystem creates many jobs in China. If Apple managed to move jobs to India (or wherever cheap labor is), Chinese government will stop being nice to them.

And even then, right now in China, iCloud service is run by Guizhou cloud, not Apple.

1) China already exerts massive control over all of their social medias via social credit censoring.

2) China absolutely did ban most external social media and forces those that remain to hold data locally.

3) China still has the Great Firewall that everybody forgets about.

4) "He does it too" is the argument a two year old uses and should be accorded the same level of respect.

They already do and it has been that way since "opening" up their markets.

If I recall correctly, Apple isn’t allowed to run iCloud services in China, they are run and controlled by a local company

You can’t claim this is unfair to China, when China requires foreign companies enter into joint ventures which give the Chinese partner majority voting share.

The US is simply reciprocating.

They’re not. Why are you making that assumption? The US is saying that in order to access the US market they have to divest. They’re free to sell at a fair market price - including to European buyers. They can also choose not to and leave the US market and keep operating elsewhere. They can also just sell the US business and keep everything else the way it is.

Well, that's pretty much how China behaves with respect to foreign companies operating in China. They all need to be joint partnerships with owners in China.

Surely this is sarcasm?

Yes absolutely. China.

You have to give away 50% of your local subsidiary just to operate there.

And why do you think Google and Facebook don’t even offer their services there?

They aren't demanding a sale. They are just saying they can't operate in the country if they don't sell.

They have a choice to leave the country or follow the rules.

Because it deals with an actual enemy pumping propaganda into your country's citizen's ears. It's a legitimate threat to national security. And no, not just the US does this. (I assume you mean free countries, not dictatorship like China, Russia or North Korea that ban everything they don't like).

Europe banned Russian propaganda outlet RT a couple of years ago, on security grounds. It's just that US prefers the soft-soft approach. Don't ban them, let them "divest". No. It doesn't work. It should be banned end of story. I guarantee a genuine competitor from the US or an allied country would make an alternative quite soon. Would be so addictive and equally brain rotting? Probably not, so people who enjoyed it before would complain. Fine, let them go join Douyin or other Chinese platform and see for themselves how "freedom of speech"looks like in China.

As for anyone who might come and say "they're not doing anything wrong". They are and you're naive for not seeing it. Every company in China is an arm of the state. As an example see how Bytedance released an ebook reader in the US with an AI assistant that tells you things like "nothing happened in 1989 on Tiananmen square", there is no genocide in Xinjiang, it is inappropriate to question and critique the Chinese communist party, China never attacked anyone,ever but it's perfectly fine to criticise every other single country on earth and it is ready to give you a litany of misdeeds any other country on earth ever did. Except China. Do you think a company like that owning what's essentially a monopoly on news for the young people is good? No it is not, and any sane politician would ban it long time ago. The fact Trump did this move worries me for his other decisions in future .