China is a dictatorship and not a benevolent one. The grand bargain being attempted in China since the '80s is that economic growth achieved by any means (by h

China is a dictatorship and not a benevolent one. The grand bargain being attempted in China since the '80s is that economic growth achieved by any means (by hook or by crook) will work to pay off the citizenry and prevent reforms in the political arena in the direction of freedom and democracy. Thus those sympathetic to the growth of freedom and democracy and opposed to power projection of a dictatorship are going to be skeptical and critical of news of Chinese economic growth and international investment. Also, since Chinese policies within their economic sphere of influence are explicitly protectionist, the expansion of that sphere materially threatens the non-Chinese firms currently brushing up against that sphere (and their future successors).