> Xi Jinping has turned China into a nightmare dictatorship.

That...seems to be giving him too much credit. Not saying that China under Xi isn't a nightmare dictatorship, just that if it is, he either didn't make it that way or didn't have far to go to get there.

> Every business that goes into China gets it's IP stolen, it's new business entities stolen, etc.

That description has been being made of China longer than Xi has been in power, probably from a few days after the initial euphoria of Communist China opening up to Western business wore off.

China liberalized a bit under Hu, with the pullbacks liberties only beginning after the 2008 olympics. Xi…as a child of the cultural revolution who seems to have nostalgic feelings for it for some reason, was a huge step back. He is also china’s first leader who is monolingual and skipped most of his college education (having a degree handed to him after the cultural revolution ended). It’s weird.

People forget china’s rollercoaster with liberalization in recent history, with China opening up dramatically in the late 80s before a huge pullback due to Tiananmen Square, there was also a movement in the late 70s that gained a lot of traction before being quashed. The pullback after the 2008 olympics has just lasted longer than the previous ones.