I think you're perpetuating a false equivalence, though.
The Chinese government kicks out foreign social media because they want to censor a laundry list of topics and have near-direct control over discourse.
If we assume poor intent, the US wants to kick out TikTok in order to prop up the market share of US/Western-owned social media companies.
But if we assume better intent, the US wants to kick out TikTok in order to deny the Chinese government the ability to run unfettered political/social influence campaigns on US citizens. (Instead they'll have to play cat-and-mouse games on Western-owned platforms.)
Even if both intentions are there, I think this is much better justification than what the Chinese government does.
You're talking about intent, but I'm not sure I understand the relevance of intentions here. We're evaluating behavior, which remains the same irrespective of what intentions motivated it. I think it goes without saying that the Chinese government and the US government will invoke quite different rationalizations to explain their behavior, but I'm not sure that any rationalizations are sufficient to justify behavior that is bad in itself.
Or, more simply: no, intent does not matter -- you are responsible for the damage that proceeds from your purposeful actions regardless of what ideas were in your head at the time. Ends are not sufficient to justify means.
The Chinese government kicks out foreign social media because they want to censor a laundry list of topics and have near-direct control over discourse.
If we assume poor intent, the US wants to kick out TikTok in order to prop up the market share of US/Western-owned social media companies.
But if we assume better intent, the US wants to kick out TikTok in order to deny the Chinese government the ability to run unfettered political/social influence campaigns on US citizens. (Instead they'll have to play cat-and-mouse games on Western-owned platforms.)
Even if both intentions are there, I think this is much better justification than what the Chinese government does.
While the action may be similar, intent matters.