Western IT and Internet companies find themselves being marginalized and having their intellectual property copied. There exists quite a bit of local innovation in applying tech to China as much applied tech requires different workflow models, so not everything that is copied can be applied directly with success.

Many consumer product companies: Coke, P&G, Nike, etc.. have done well. How their revenue breaks down to sharing with local partners and how much gets back to the international public entity is unknown to me.

The article makes some good points, but still tries to label the gov as "Communist China". The author makes a good case for educating Westerners that China isn't what you think it is. We need more of this kind of talk. But reusing the old label of "Communist China" misses the mark. I don't know what a better label would be.

I agree with much of what you have said. The deck is stacked against many types of foreign companies. It is well past time for these entities to start publicly acknowledging this.

All that said, I cannot agree with everything the author has said. His 9 points listed under "What is the Chinese Economic Model" are well identified (the bold bullet text itself). But his rational in each of the associated paragraphs is one-sided. He seems to fully support Western economic models without acknowledging their flaws and culpability in our engagements with China. Stolen IP? Slave labor? Western government and business knew this full well when we got started and we did it anyway because we reaped short-term value from doing so. We helped fuel this fire. We allowed the Yuan to be a fixed/manipulated currency and knew full well why China was doing it and what would happen after they amassed enough wealth. These "playbooks" have always been completely open. We may not be able to directly influence China, but we can directly influence the Western leaders we elect and the Western companies we buy goods and services from.

If you need to understand the mindset of the typical Chinese government official, I will offer this: Many of them are living a "good life" and those that support their governance are living good lives. They do not want economic growth to collapse and do not see communist-era economic methods as appropriate tools. They kept the structure of governance but replaced the tools. But even though the structure of governance has remained very similar, the number and variety of participants has changed considerably. Unlike most U.S. leaders and citizens, most Chinese have experienced great suffering. There is support by mainstream Chinese for much of the current heavy handed behavior and as such the government will continue to use such tools they feel are useful in hedging against various forms of collapse. Its critical to understand much of this is not big gov oppressing its people as the majority of Chinese approve of hedging against extreme failure at most all cost. Will this approach even out over a reasonable period of time? Will it avoid more severe outcomes? I have no idea. I do know if things get bad enough that it effects the security of Western countries, then its already extremely bad for the Chinese.