I don't know about the suggestion that it's the government of China pushing for the feature itself, but the fact the feature now exists and WILL be used by authoritarian regimes to scan for political content is clearly understood by Apple employees. From the article:

> Apple employees have flooded an Apple internal Slack channel with more than 800 messages on the plan announced a week ago, workers who asked not to be identified told Reuters. Many expressed worries that the feature could be exploited by repressive governments looking to find other material for censorship or arrests, according to workers who saw the days-long thread.

your quote contradicts your statement. it seems like the employees are worried that it could be exploited, not that it necessarily will be.

In fairness, this is literally happening on Chinese messenger services today so I wouldn't call it either of those

Apple isn't being pressured from China, but criticizing the CCP as the brutal dictatorship it is is not racist (and that idea is done verbatim CCP propaganda).

Randomly suggesting that every authoritarian decision taken unilaterally by an american company was made to please the evil chinese government while offering no substantial proof is not "criticizing the CCP", it is just shoehorning US's far-right talking points into a thread that has nothing to do with it.