To put it another way; this is like allowing your enemy to design and manfacture your military jets.
I’d even say that’s the entire point of the internet - sharing and inclusion. There isn’t “our” internet and “their” internet - there’s just the internet.
Do you think that it's really up to us? We weren't the ones who set up the Great Firewall. We have been trying to "build walls" for the past 30 years and it has gotten us nowhere. I get that people like to say things that evoke "positivity" or to feel good about themselves but there needs to be some semblance of reality if we really want to progress.
It is, unfortunately, a new field of warfare.
I like to think I'm the most free speech loving, liberal progressive in any room I walk into. But I think the wild west of the internet that existed in the 90s and early 2000s that leant itself to idealistic visions of what the internet could be is not what we have today.
You can't build bridges that are then used against you for espionage, theft of intellectual property, disinformation, tracking and abducting political dissidents, and infiltrating critical national security infrastructure, and then point at that and say "this is free speech!" And if there's no room to acknowledge that in your understanding of how the modern internet works in reality, then I don't know that we're operating from a similar understanding of reality.
A lot of political leaders are realizing that the communism of China, while different in many ways to the Soviet variety, is still incompatible with the USA.
It seems like a national pride thing that China cannot be subservient to the US, and the US can't survive a world where it's billionaires aren't in complete control.
There's maybe a synthesis where the Chinese billionaires take over America? That way it's still wealth in charge in the US, and the Chinese in control of china
China's specific ideology is irrelevant; "Capitalism with Chinese Characteristics" or balls out Marxism won't change the fact that the CCP needs to feed and manage a billion people. They will eventually engage in aggressive, even ruthless, behavior because they have to; 'tis the nature of Realpolitik. National pride and ideology have nothing to do with it, hegemonic competition is inevitable.