I think it's more likely that they want you to feel more at home. I was visiting an overseas team in Bangalore for a week and the team took me out to ... a steakhouse. Most of the team didn't eat beef but they wanted to take me somewhere they thought I'd like. I was appreciative of their consideration but ended up ordering the chicken, felt weird otherwise.
Right, this is exactly the problem I was talking about! And to be fair, there probably are a lot of Americans who would prefer a steakhouse; and many more who want to try "real" Indian food but just aren't ready for how different cultural food tastes actually are.
But when you've eaten chicken feet a dozen times, and incorporated "century egg" into your own personal cooking repertoire, it's a bit frustrating to make your way to a third-tier city in China and be fed breaded deep-fried bits of chicken with a bland sweet-and-sour sauce!
There was a roaring trade in American coca-cola in Beijing because enough people wanted to avoid the local version. As a non-American, I couldn’t taste the difference, but the imported stuff was 3x the price.
Another phrase I heard often was an irate “This would never happen in America!”
And yes, the taste is different, even for Coca-Cola light.
I'm not sure if the corn syrup thing has changed in recent years or not.