>Seeing as encryption is illegal in China

Source for this? That would make any https site in china illegal.

I'm sorry, I was wrong. It requires a license from the State Encryption Management Commission: http://www.cryptolaw.org/cls2.htm#prc

I am not a lawyer nor a cryptography expert who can advise whether licenses are granted easily or whether they are revoked if you fall out of favour.

Not an expert, but I searched and found this link which seems to explain it well:

https://www.freshfields.com/en-us/our-thinking/campaigns/dig...

tl;dr: encryption is not completely illegal, but it sounds like it's pretty tightly controlled.

I didn't think they'd be foolish enough to completely ban it.

They're not comically evil, they just have certain incentives.

Key escrow meets those goals.