The real story here is China and India have been quietly buying up gobs of African IP blocks - most of which are used for botting operations. I see it in my server logs. China already de-facto owns half of Africa so it's natural they would prey on their scarce IP resources as well. When you see AI scraping at a massive scale originating from $AFRICAN_COUNTRY IP space, and that country's GDP is smaller than Rhode Isla…
I see this often that people refer to countries as actors. Are you implying that the government of these countries bought those resources and they're now owned by the government? Or are you saying that citizens/corporations of those countries are buying? I find it weird, I wouldn't use the phrase "The United States is buying XYZ" unless it was the current government doing so?
In China, there is no meaningful difference between the party and any Chinese company. Companies are seed funded by the state and carry the will of the state. There is no "come back with a court order" in China. And even if there was, the courts are also just another arm of the party.