The Chinese government forces foreign companies to do business with a domestic company, which they then use to raid the foreign company's intellectual property, develop a localized state-backed clone product, which they then allow to "compete" and inevitably crush the foreign company's product.
It's not as straightforward as outright "abdication of ownership to a domestic company," but the end-result is similar, and I'd argue it's more morally reprehensible.
Ya that's another very common frustration against an imaginary premise.
Western companies that enter joint ventures in China with IP transfers are proactively done with executives who explicitly weigh the cost benefit of gaining the Chinese market and choose to do so.
An equivalent here would be for ByteDance to choose to enter the US market knowing they need to oxymoronically abdicate ownership once they do.
You're referencing joint-venture requirements. They've been phased out in most industries over the past three decades, and they're not as onerous as you're depicting them.
Plenty of Western manufacturers did fine over decades with junior partners. VW never lost its technological edge to a Chinese competitor, despite being in a joint venture since 1984.
It's not as straightforward as outright "abdication of ownership to a domestic company," but the end-result is similar, and I'd argue it's more morally reprehensible.
At least TikTok is going to get a check.