China Is Nationalizing Its Tech Sector

I feel compelled to dispel these because it's dangerous and unconstructive for the community to have such completely false information presented as fact. I might actually share a detailed post on this in the near future since I feel people here completely misunderstand China regularly.

As a foreigner, China is truly off-limits

No, it's not. Visas are not easy but they are easier than the US. As a founder, you get infinite renewal on long term business visas instantly, with low capital requirements and essentially no other requirements. I would say that China is very friendly and more welcoming to foreign investment than many other countries in measurable ways. In addition, corruption is very much under control and the business environment is overall pretty advanced. It's not all rainbows and unicorns: documentation and process can be very frustrating, but it's fundamentally an open and welcoming system. Once you're on the books, it's awesome. Digital tax, 100% mobile payment penetration, automated banking APIs, etc. Having been through the experience of applying for a US work visa and many types of Chinese visas, both for myself and employees, I am speaking from direct experience here and therefore feel qualified to comment.

In China, nearly all innovative industries are completely legally restricted from foreigner owned businesses

Absolutely, completely untrue. Restrictions exist only on particular industries (chiefly media, telco and some sectors of finance). Pretty much everything is open. China really likes innovation and key cities such as Shenzhen are actively seeking to bring in more foreigners, with an international entrepreneurial recruitment drive to bring startups to the city underway right now.

Likewise, in China, most non-innovative industries require you to setup a company with foreigners as minority shareholders, so control is never in foreign hands.

Absolutely untrue. You can set up a wholly foreign owned enterprise in almost any sector.

In China, all foreign private investment is also highly restricted with all transactions needing government approval.

Corporate setup requires government stamping, but I have never heard of a rejection of investment. There is an approval process on international corporate transfers and some restrictions on minimum domestic capital maintenance (largely for asset seizure in case of domestic legal concerns) but this is cleared if a company is wound down and there are so many workarounds in place that one could see these processes being streamlined in the near future.

Large foreign-owned businesses operating in China seemingly always lose to local Chinese companies, not on merit, but by red tape or shady government practices: Google, Facebook, Amazon, Uber, and others

The political reality is that it is not in China's national interest to allow the creation of vast databases of its citizens and their movements by foreign companies for storage on foreign ground. As with any market, it is important to understand where the limits are when doing business in China. However, the good news is the government is more likely to come knock on your door and let you know if they are getting uncomfortable with how things are going and offer you an opportunity to correct than outright shut down your business.

My personal experience with Amazon in China was that they had copy-pasted foreign process to China with little thought, and that seriously undermined their offering to the point where, even as a foreign business owner with some international infrastructure requirements, it made no sense to deal with them.

Even small foreign-owned businesses in China get weeded out through dubious enforcement

Food is my industry so I can probably add some context here. While I hadn't heard of this case, it's true to say that Shanghai has been particularly strong on cracking down on food safety related issues recently. This is partly due to the shake-up of food safety regulation which occurred recently at the national level and the evolving enforcement framework trickling down as a result. Frankly some areas are currently inadequately detailed, and it is unclear whether the case mentioned was due to an honest mistake, an upset former employee, or shady business, or some combination all three.

As a foreigner, if you marry a Chinese national, getting a Chinese work visa actually becomes harder

I am on my second marriage to a Chinese national and my second business. The Chinese visa system is not designed for people who cross categories - ie. doing business, also married. That's OK, it just means you have to apply for one category or another. The truth is, it is actually easier for founders to get long term visas than for people married to Chinese citizens. The visa rules are constantly evolving, in short it was very easy pre-2008, now it is a hassle but getting better. Unless you have visited Turkey or Syria, in which case it is very hard.

Sure, China is "pro-trade" in the sense of wanting to making money off the status quo trade imbalance.

Every country's government wants economic fortune.

Capitalism and planning isn't as far apart as it might appear.

What is a large multinational corporation except a centrally planned bureaucracy incentivized to maximize profits to shareholders? And where is the majority of wealth in the West (especially in the tech world), except in the hands of multinationals?

In theory, a failing government is replaced by a different government. In practice, whether voters successfully identify problems and pick a better winner is an open question.

The US was certainly driven by nationalism, but the individualism vs collectivism component is not clearly individualistic either. For instance in our founding, states were viewed as entities in and of themselves. Institutions like the senate and the electoral college are very clear reminders that the state was seen as more relevant than the individual.

In either case today we've gone more individualistic and globalistic. This diminishes the strength of the state. And I think many see that as a positive today without considering that things we consider rights and privileges we take for granted are not inalienable, but a product of our nation which creates that inalienability. The reason you can burn a flag as a protest without being rounded up and summarily 'removed from society' one way or the other, as would happen in many parts of this world, is because of what that very flag represents.

If we created a nation that was an aggregate of this world, it'd still be quite an awful place. This is in part why, though I'd hardly consider myself nationalistic, I think that keep our nations strong and independent is so crucial. I also find it trite that the push for extremes of globalism is largely coming from corporations and other power non-state entities. Guess who rules a society where the nation or state is secondary? Many would like to think it's the individual, but it's not. Globalism is analogous to union busting on the international scale. Many people were led to believe that unions were not in their best interest. That worked out well...