To believe that China does not attempt to influence other countries is naive. China puts a great deal of pressure on other nations with regard to things like recognition of Taiwan or inviting the Dalai Lama to speak. These have occasionally been in the news over the last few years, e.g. China’s retaliatory measures against Norway for Liu Xiabo winning the Nobel Peace Prize, but in fact they go back decades – when Michelangelo Antonioni was showing his documentary film Chung Kuo around in the early 1970s, in European countries where a screening was organized the local Chinese embassy would raise scandal.
And for pressuring airlines not to list Taiwan on their websites for booking.
China has repeatedly lobbied, with some success now, for East African nations to adopt its "Great Firewall" network infrastructure.
It's not about saying "stop censoring the internet or we'll nuke you", it's about saying "if you want to do business with us we demand that you meet these standards, otherwise no biggy, we'll just go elsewhere."
And China does attempt to do the same thing, for instance in many African countries. It's less obvious because they're still ramping up their diplomacy, US and EU have a huge headstart there.
If an American pays a Chinese businessman in China a bribe, that's an FCPA [1] violation. If the U.S. government wanted to prevent American technology companies from helping China's dictator build a modern dystopia, it would have precedent.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_Corrupt_Practices_Act
Israel massacring Palestinians? Hey man, they can do whatever they want, we don't have any right to tell them not to and it doesn't make what they're doing any less wrong!
I don't have the answers but there are hard questions there, not just for our governments but for us as voters.