> Sure.

I mean yes? That's what they do - dumb "political work" activities. It's not the high level strategic coordination, which I said exists (as they do in US), but citing pedestrian CCP committees ain't it. It's Karen from HR buying birthday cakes tier of activities. As someone who spent significant time in both places, sure, PRC companies doesn't fuck with central gov, US companies gets to try to. But push comes to shove, US companies cave, so for the purpose of foreign policy and geopolitics, especially with respect to great powers competition, it's a distinction without difference, because US companies will be subservient to national security interests, with minimal discretion, as they should be. Reminder much chip restrictions were done without industry input / consultation before roll out. Because US system capable of unilaterally laying down the law as well as CCP.

>is not like that.

Yes and NSA totally dismantled domestic spying / FVEY hack to spy on host nationals via third countries (rule of law you know) because Americans found it repugnant, except not. Ex-CIA hires still deciding facebook content policy on "misinfo". US voters thinks lots of things US gov does are repugnant, but functionally cannot change it, especially when it comes to foreign policy.

>functionally bans

Except PRC doesn't. Entire US internet sector is welcome to operate in PRC, provided they follow onerous (expensive) PRC filtering regulations. Which they choose not to. US platforms functionally choses not to operate in PRC, because they don't want to follow the same PRC laws that PRC companies has to follow. Let's not forget these platforms were blocked post 2009 minority riots for actual valid national security reasons, FB/Twitter refused to censor / filter calls for retaliatory violence. Queue PRC platforms implementing onerously expensive human moderation... which later western platforms adopted following NZ shooting, myanmar killings etc. We have TikTok following the same US laws every other US platform follows... and more (again, Oracle basically JV arrangment), i.e. TikTok operating at regulatory disadvantage. Incidentally after getting up their expensive human moderation programs, FB/Google tried but internal dissent killed efforts because they spent the money and can scaling system to PRC. If anything PRC would LOVE if western platforms returned, followed PRC law, and start handing over dissident info per PRC cyber security regulations / get squeezed by PRC influence.

The hypocrisy is thinking they're remotely comparable situations when TikTok chooses to compete in an unfair US regulatory enviroment and western companies choose not to compete in a fair regulatory PRC enviroment. TikTok even offered to basically have US intelligence/oversight on all US activities. The hypocrisy is there is no onerous, concessions TikTok can do to operate in US as a PRC company, even ones that puts it at significant competitive disadvantaged (extra regulatory costs) vs western platforms choosing not to shoulder the same regulatory costs as other PRC companies (100,000s human moderators ain't cheap). Extra hubris when proponents of "CCP ban US platforms" thinks US platforms shouldn't follow PRC laws and somehow are victims. Or that complying to same filtering laws is the same as divestiture. It's difference between house rules being, clean your dishes, versus get a sex change.