It deserves some nuance yes:

Chinese firms are not directly controlled by the state.

This 'Arm Heist' is probably not driven by state apparatus.

But, some artifacts of state power and intervention are egregious enough to make them essentially an extension of state power.

1) The 'China Venture' ownership policy, is the first foundation of this 'Arm Heist', without this Nationalist policy, it'd be a different situation.

2) China has required IP transfer for many things, this is state intervention.

3) The lack of commercial legal recourse for ARM in this case, is a 'de fact' pro-China issue. It's probably not designed to be this way, but it puts every foreign company at a major disadvantage, there may be behind the scenes shenanigangs by the state, we don't know.

4) The CCP has minders in every company to ensure CCP loyalty and compliance. They were in 85% of companies, soon 100%. Imagine having a group of guys from the CIA/NSA who you have to hire inside your company, who work directly for the President, who is unelected. This is a major tool of control few people talk about.

5) Large deals and orgs are often politicized, either by powerful politicians as individuals or state apparatus. Nobody knows who owns Huawei, other then there seems to be a strategic state component.

6) The state can make powerful reforms that fundamentally reshape the industry at their leisure - they pulled Didi and And listings at the last minute and disallowed them from raising money outside China which really brought their valuation down. Not only is the government flexing it's power, but it's doing it in a sketchy, hypernationalist way. Forcing Chinese companies to remain all Chinese to raise Chinese cash etc. To me - this is the 'last straw' and it's a raising of a form of wall of capital that's frankly probably going to hurt China more than anything. Alibaba is tanking [1]

7) CCP ultimately access to any and all the data from Ant, Didi, TikTok that it needs to enforce total 360 absolutism and thought control policies.

Jack Ma style Entrepreneurs probably don't care that much about the Chinese state, but the mechanisms in place by the CCP ensure that ultimately, they are tools to it.

If a Western company can sell something in China that can't be stolen, well, they can try while it lasts. But joint ventures etc. will probably fail.

The notion of doing an IP deal with China is absurd at face value.

'Brand' is probably the best thing to have, like Pizza Hut because it's ownership of 'hearts and minds' - that said, any company that does do this is going to have to 'toe the line'.

As we've seen LeBron James become a vocal SJW in his own country, but line up like a perfect stooge anti-SJW for the CCP for Chinese related issues, actively calling on people to not call out China etc. - this does have relevance as well.

In the end, the problem is that nobody seems to be able to have enough power or intelligence to do anything about any of it. Only the US alone has enough power but even then it's fragmented. Germany depends on exports to China and their voice is the influencer in EU. Moreover, even if they were at the same table, I'm not sure if they would have a solution.

Probably what is needed is a 'China Alliance' which is to say US, EU, UK, Canada, Aussie, Japan, Korea, India etc. form some kind of common agreement with respect to dealing with China and then try to work on big issues without China trying to fragment the group. Trans Pacific Partnership was sort of that, but Trump's personal business instincts, which make sense on some level, were completely wrong on that one.

[1] Alibaba: The Mass Exodus.

https://seekingalpha.com/article/4451692-alibaba-the-mass-ex...