Talking about countries versus companies is a different argument depending on whether you are inside or outside Chinese borders.

I'm not at all in favor of the US government banning apps unless the US government publicly and transparently shows the proof of security risk first. Anything short of that just appears to be politics and is likely to just be a negotiation tactic.

I prefer more privacy controls and transparency (which gives consumers / Attorneys General the ability to sue the app company), but I don't want my government to see the Chinese government's policies as the thing we need to compete with.

good point, if anything we need to inspire other countries about the benefits of democracy. A lot of my coworkers here in the US still think that China is doing good stuff.

> if anything we need to inspire other countries about the benefits of democracy.

I think the US needs to look outward to functional democracies before we try to "inspire" other countries with our broken corruption. What the USA calls lobbying other OECD countries is criminal bribery and all other political dysfunction in the US rolls downhill from there.

I'm not blinded to think "China is doing good stuff", but I'm highly suspicious that we should see ourselves as any better than them right now. We are completely unable to address lots of our own {civil, legal, justice, health, economics, ethics, etc} issues.