This has nothing to do with democracy, it's about trying to keep a level playing field. The US has been trying to open trade with China since the 70s, and until China stops doing this the US has to adjust trade policy to keep things fair. Free and open trade is a two way street, otherwise it's just charity to the bad faith actor.
That's because China has strongly failed to follow trade agreements under WTO, including the TRIPS agreement (which is an international agreement protecting IP rights), SCM agreement (which prohibits state subsidies of certain trade goods), the National Treatment Principle (which mandates equal treatment of imported and locally produced goods), National Treatment and Market Access commitments (China strongly restricts foreign ownership in certain sectors of their local market, including the tech industry), etc. Mind you most of these agreements were made in the 90s, so China has had plenty of time to comply. It's a bit pointless to keep using the WTO when a country isn't going to comply anyways.
I'm not saying the US is blameless either, but with China, it's nearly shameless. In the tech industry alone, Youtube, Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, Twitch, Steam, LinkedIn, Dropbox, ChatGPT and Copilot, Github (partially), etc are all banned in China. Shoot, Google left a decade ago after they kept getting hacked by the Chinese government. When China was still quite poor and developing, this behavior was overlooked, but as they become a rich world power on the global stage, that's not the situation anymore.
The US has a long history of abusive trade relationships. China has seen what the US has done in Latam (and possibly in Africa) and said nope. US is used to have everyone play the US game when trading in Latam and other developing countries. China has been making the US play the China game when trading with China. And now that China is a serious world power, it is possibly a bit late to stop playing.
