The same thing that people talking about the Chinese boogieman mean.

A nebulous, ill-defined hand-waved general accusation, with no clear goalposts, that infers that there's an intersection between the company's past or present employees, and past or present employees, executives, or advisers in government, that the company at some point received government seed funding, investments, or government contracts, that secret meetings take place between the company, and the government, that the company is a special contractor for the government, building custom solutions for it, or that the company may be compromised by government meddling.

The beauty of accusing a company of having close ties with its government is that it can mean almost anything you want it to mean.

Is this to say that there is literally no noteworthy difference in the relationships Chinese and American companies have with their respective governments?

I'm open to the idea, what evidence would you propose supports this?

Maybe top government <--> Corporate executive revolving door.

I'm loving the new and improved HN where even asking a simple straightforward question gets downvoted.