pcalau12i

In the USA, while there is on paper separation of church and state, in practice there isn't, because theists can control the state, and so they will just make up fake justifications for their religious laws they don't believe in themselves. The only way to genuinely separate church and state is to not allow theists to control the state. Legally, the CPC controls the state, and you cannot join the CPC is you are a theist, so you will be limited in any sort of political ambitions.

Proselytizing is also illegal. If people come to your church it should because of their own personal interests or for family reasons because of your heritage. It shouldn't be because some charlatan convinces you on the street or the television that you need to attend, because that just opens the way for a lot of exploitation, like snake oil salesmen and generally people who do harm to society at large.

If you are fine with those conditions, there are churches in China of many different faiths. The people who cry about persecution are often Christians who don't like these conditions, they want to be able to control the state like in the US and they want to be able to proselytize and can't. These are the evangelical types which definitely get persecuted in China but that's a good thing.

Historically the US would go to war or even coup countries to force them to trade with the US, it has spent a very long time building up its dollar hegemony. If it suddenly switches to cutting off trade with its largest trading partners, that will basically disappear overnight. It is already disappearing gradually because of US's obsessive use of sanctions has created a whole bloc of countries that have no choice but to figure out how to bypass the US dollar. I wouldn't even consider the US threatening to cut trade ties all its largest trading partners as "bullying," it really reflects how much weaker the US has become, because in the past it would just use force to enforce its hegemony over global trade, now it seems too weak to it is just threatening to throw a temper tantrum and threatening to pull out of the global market instead, despite this being something that will ultimately cause whatever is left of US hegemony to collapse overnight. I would bet a lot of money the US would not actually do this, Trump is just bluffing, because I'm sure he's surrounded by people who actually do care about maintaining US control.

What Trump doesn't seem to get is that the hegemony of the US dollar depends upon people, well, trading in US dollars. Sanctions and tariffs are the fastest way to kill US dollar hegemony, so honestly I'm all for it.