The idea that Apple is controlling things here does not make sense. Obviously, if Apple had the choice they wouldn't censor Apple News at all.
We know Apple isn't blocking Apple news voluntarily in China because if they were, they would choose to block it other places too. In fact, blocking it everywhere would be trivially easy and very cheap: they would simply not have a News app at all.
If you don't like Apple's publishing standards, then by all means object as vociferously as you see fit. Just don't get that confused with the Chinese government's control of information.
This is exemplified by this above-and-beyond blocking, as well as their censorship of entirely legal content (e.g. nudity) in the US app store.
I would have much less issue with them if there were a setting to install an alternative app store on the iPhone; then it would simply be editorializing. As it stands there is no way for me to persist e.g. a gay porn app on my iPhone, and that crosses the line into voluntary censorship of legal content by Apple.
But Apple is censoring content on US phones with US SIM cards while they're physically located inside China, which is a huge departure from established practice, and isn't actually useful since the same non-Chinese phone can access all the same news sites via Safari.