And the west always said that China is bad for doing it.
That’s the irony part.
"The west" criticizes China because the ruling regime imposes a series of arbitrary restrictions to foreign companies, including outright banning them, while demanding that Chinese companies should have unrestricted access to foreign markets.
You are now faced with an exceptionally rare event where a member of "the west" enforces restrictions that are similar to the ones China broadly imposes on foreign companies, but does so on an isolated incident. And you call that irony.
Beware of the beginnings.
Why do you presume this is bad?
If it’s bad why doing it?
We would like for western companies to be able to operate in China the way we let Chinese companies operate in our nations, but since China don't want to reciprocate and want to play an unfair game, the only real option is to level the playing field - if China wants to make the rules, lets take those rules and apply them domestically to. We should:
* Require Chinese companies to have a domestic partner.
* Selectively enforce (or rather ignore) IP when infringing on Chinese IP.
* Force IP transfer as a condition to access our markets.
* Require Chinese visitors to tell the police where they're living.
* Many more policies which are unfavourable to the Chinese.
China, chief hypocrite, will of course complain about anything which discriminates against China abroad, while doing exactly that thing at home.
No; the restrictions the West places on Chinese companies are not remotely comparable in proportionality or form.
But worse - China does not just have the opportunity to operate in the West in an asymmetrical fashion, but they're fairly aggressively openly stealing intellectual property etc., not just as a matter of 'national security' but as a matter of normal business operations.
The Chinese government operates police stations in foreign countries to surveille and oppress local citizens of the Chinese diaspora, and to coordinate activities.
There are always geopolitical shenanigans, but the West acted in roughly good faith inviting China into the WTO and was happy to play by some reasonable set of rules.
It's fair to use the label 'hypocritical' for what seems like arbitrary action in the West, but it's not truly arbitrary because it's a reaction to what was lack of good faith at least on the terms that were understood, and the term 'hypocritical' could be used tenfold in the other direction.
Also - even if everyone was playing roughly fair according to their own competitive advantages, the imbalances in some areas would be so problematic that there would have be some kind of reckoning anyhow.
The terms need to be reset, capital flows need to be adjusted, the USD cannot maintain such a high ranking position if they don't want to import, vast offshore tax shelters need to be shut down. Dubai is 'Mos Eisley' on Tatooine it's really just bad money.
So now Europe are doing the same thing.
Not really. Everyone was extending courtesies to China, but China opted to unilaterally reject the notion thay others could receive the same benefits they were enjoying. Now you're seeing this sort of courtesies being pulled for the first time. And you opt to frame this as hipocricy?
I think the question is: did China ever took over a foreign company because "national security" or whatever perceived risk?
Even those 'local partnerships' in China were not above board - they existed to steal the intellectual property from the partnered Western company.
It seems the only thing that can be nailed down are 'consumer brands' which are difficult to duplicate.
[1] https://www.planetizen.com/node/47241
At least in the context of trade over the last 35 years, there has been an imbalance.
As for 'Arbitrary Rules' - it's a fair claim and the US, EU etc. need to establish clear and fair terms. So should China, India, Brazil, everywhere else.
If, for instance, we call out China for surveillance of their citizens and then start doing the same, isn‘t that ironic?
This is not the same as surveillance, that's internal affairs. This is external affairs.