This is an old orientalist trope.

Bill Barr has had the ability to declassify for 80 days, nothing yet. I expect nothing but covering up for the DoJ and Wray's FBI.

This seems to be the opposite of the US system where, once you amass that amount of wealth, power, and influence, you get to control the major political parties.

China is different. It’s not an oil and gas oligarchy like Russia or the Gulf states. It is somewhat like the US was during the Second World War—somewhat capitalist in form but almost entirely geared toward the strategic goals of the country, as dictated by the government. The main exceptions are that the US had elections intermittently and that the US was in the midst of total war. China isn’t at war though—it’s just a totalitarian society.

"This whole exercise was teaching me that Russian business culture is closer to that of a prison yard than anything else. In prison, all you have is your reputation. Your position is hard-earned and it is not relinquished easily. When someone is crossing the yard coming for you, you cannot stand idly by. You have to kill him before he kills you. If you don’t, and if you manage to survive the attack, you’ll be deemed weak"

Without knowing the details, this sounds more efficient and potentially fairer for the society. It allows for information and innovation to flow in the industry, rather than a single company making absurd amount of money only because they can keep it secret.

It doesn't mean wealth is automatically better distributed, but it could help.

This is particularly true of a playing field as large and as cutthroat as China, where at any given time there are thousands of competitors jostling for dominance of even the most minuscule of niches.

Yet.

Any entity that wields power, is a potential threat to a monopoly power holder (the state), and as a result, has to be collaborated with, or fought against.

Also it's just pretty clear in general who has what interests in large American corporations. You can look at the chain of command up to the board of directors back to the shareholders.

That if the government really wanted the information, the could just send a National Security Letter using Secret Courts.

Aren’t the fates of Lavabit and MCI demonstrations of that power?

Huawei is not a state-owned enterprise, yet people are saying that operating in China, being subject to pressure from the Chinese government, makes it essentially state-owned.

Yet we know from Snowden that basically all the large American tech companies were secretly providing access to the NSA or had been pwned by the NSA. So far, there's no evidence that Huawei has spied on its customers, or that their products contain backdoors.

Note: the original claim is that companies in those countries DO NOT attempt to defy their government for similar information requests. I believe the burden of proof for that claim is on the people making that claim. I am not claiming that this has happened in either country. I’m only stating that I will not believe the original claim without seeing some evidence.

Surely you see the absurdity of that remark?

There are no substantial cases of companies in Russia and China where they have tried to fight information disclosures. Except for the high profile case of the social network in Russia... which is now under new, Kremlin friendly leadership.