In March 2009, China blocked access to Google's YouTube due to footage showing Chinese security forces beating Tibetans. Access to other Google online services was denied to users arbitrarily.
The search engine remained operational under the condition that the government could filter the search results. In January 2010, Google announced that, in response to a Chinese-originated hacking attack on them and other US tech companies, they were no longer willing to censor searches in China and would pull out of the country completely.
Also, the government didn't "block" Dragonfly. Google terminated the project after its own employees protested it and politicians criticized it.
(All the above from Wikipedia either as direct quotes or paraphrased for brevity.)
If we're not being disingenuous, that's like telling your coworker: "If you come into work today, I'll kill this bystander and rob your house," and then saying: "Hmm, I guess they decided by themselves to not to come into work today."
(And apparently, Facebook has tried multiple times since to re-enter China in one form or another, and China has either refused or quickly re-banned them: https://www.theverge.com/2018/7/25/17612162/facebook-technol...)
Could you substantiate this claim? Regarding China and Dragonfly, I only remember there being employee and governmental criticism, but no outright ban from doing business in China: https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2018/11/27/google-...
There were hearings and calls by US politicians to stop Dragonfly, after which it was stopped.
America is being arbitrary, capricious, and unfair, in contradiction to the neutral and generally applicable law in America. But China's legal system has been arbitrary and capricious for decades, and is rotten to the core, consistently elevating the whims of the ruling party over rights and due process.
To use nonsense numbers: the US is designed to be 0% arbitrary but is being 20% arbitrary here. China is designed to be 90% arbitrary all the time. Clearly means China can keep out all the firms and be virtuous, but when the US keeps out any firms for any reason they're unfair and wicked!
You have two systems, and one of them is having doubts about the efficacy of its own system.
In theory at least, China’s planning either results in less competitive alternatives, or eventually it would have to open up its economy (when the playground is more fair) to foster its own innovation. If it never allows competition then innovation would languish.
If we take action in contradiction to this natural series of economic events, we would be hypocrites as we’d be losing faith in our core economic beliefs.