Why. China can just force SpaceX to turn off over China. Unless this is part of a political 'Radio Free Europe' style operation China will control this as much as everything else.
As others have pointed out regulations. I believe Musk also really wants Tesla to succeed there (it is a very large market for them) and I have no doubt the Chinese government would punish another company of Musk's if they wanted to.
Regulation. Do you think SpaceX would operate an illigal network in a foreign company? Do you not think China had the pull to tell the US to keep SpaceX in line?
The can ban the sale of terminals. They can scan waves.
One of the consequences of the Sputnik launch was that it basically enshrined the principle that overflying another country with an active satellite was not an illegal act. (That is, the US government decided not to protest, because it meant they wouldn't have to apologize for their own future spy satellites.) I doubt China wants to break this precedent.
This thread applies also to Russia, where complaints about coming constellation were already voiced in the government.
In both cases I assume the issue at stake is the freedom of communications. I'd hope to have both technical means to communicate (and hide those communications) and enough support on USA side not to pressure SpaceX to deny service worldwide.
This is a country that has the GF. One that routinely oppresses its citizens. One that gives its citizens a social rating that can prevent them from traveling etc etc. If there's one thing I'm sure of, it's that the CCP will find a way of stopping access to this. If it takes hacking into SpaceX, shooting down 12K satellites, etc, it will. Maintaining power is what the CCP does.
"hide the uplink"
Kind of hard to hide EM transmitters that aren't going to be designed for special ops teams...
Artists/celebrities keep using it (i'd even want to say endorse it). Customers keep buying from it. Unless politicians pick this up and do something like condemn this practise and threaten regulations, nothing will happen.
