Take this to the extreme to find out, "How does China owning _all_ US companies harm the US (economically)?"

Now it's obvious, it's economic warfare, and a foreign power that creates an imbalance of this nature could be reasonably classified as an invasion.

Note, the US government doesn't "buy" companies, private citizens do. Yet, I would have no issues with private foreigners buying companies, I do think having a foreign government buying companies is very bad, especially if their leader is a dictator for life.

So in your opinion, should the US government buy back the $1trillion+ bonds it sold to China?

Isn't that how bonds work? [0] Nothing extraordinary needed.

The threat is China demanding total payment at once (my vague understanding of the actual real world problem due to debt owed). Something that the US has laws protecting land and home owners [1], but no law says another country can't do this to us.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Government_bond

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Housing_Act_of_1934

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homeowners_Refinancing_Act

Government bonds generally have a fixed term, so unless I'm mistaken, repayment can't be demanded all at once. What they can do, though, is stop rolling over the debt into new bonds, which, given the deficits the US government is running, doesn't seem like a great scenario for the US, as I believe that would force bond yields to rise to entice enough buyers, which would eventually cause the cost of servicing the debt to rise.

>Government bonds generally have a fixed term, so unless I'm mistaken, repayment can't be demanded all at once.

But espionage, market and currency manipulation, copyright and patent infringement and a miriad of other activities are illegal, yet China does them with impunity.

I can imagine they can demand whatever they want, (they are a sovereign nation) and can use that debt as a bargaining chip to be used in any negotiations.

In theory, I think you are correct, in practice, who know what is possible?

I guess, I don't know of any precedents for demanding bond repayment pre-term (though I'm not well versed in that history). Those others all have precedents, and most are things that it's generally accepted that almost all large nations engage in regularly to greater or lesser degrees.

Sure, but then the US government is accepting capital from China to finance itself. Is it a high level quid-pro-quo to give China "freer" access to the US market?

Only if you agree to it? (which is seems we have up till now)

Related questions:

How does allowing the US to own Canadian companies harm Canada (economically)?

How does allowing the US to own French companies harm France (economically)?

How does allowing the US to own Nigerian companies harm Nigeria (economically)?

None of those three countries have a highly-guarded technology advantage which the US is trying to catch up on.

China investing into US companies is completely separate from the IP issue. For all intents and purposes, once you've bought a company, you've bought its IP.

Buying a company is about the most legal way I can think of, for acquiring IP.

Again - how does allowing foreign ownership of companies in your country harm your country? You mention IP - but it's not your country's IP - it's a particular company's IP. If its owners want to sell it, why does it matter if they sell it to an American, or a Chinese investor?

> If its owners want to sell it, why does it matter if they sell it to an American, or a Chinese investor?

Because there are second order benefits to Americans of America being the world power. (E.g., Americans really don’t want to live in a world where you have to learn Chinese to succeed in the business world, as opposed to everyone else having to learn English.)

Those all can cause issues. Allowing mostly foreign companies to own the majority of a country's economic sector can turn out quite bad. In fact, it has happened in history with banana republics.

I'll drop this here. One reason for this is Chinese and European managers are _a lot_ better at running companies than American ones. That's because US managers are focused almost exclusively on looting that companies they run.

The US management class has grown fearful of foreign owners. Because the foreign owners generally do not place Americans at the top levels because they can't trust them.