China has always had double standards. They make it hell for U.S companies to do business there. The only thing that has changed is that the U.S has started pushing back somewhat as of late, but things are still currently in favor of China.
When China makes draconian laws like this: https://www.chinalawblog.com/2019/09/chinas-new-cybersecurit...
Is it really a surprise that companies that care about their customer privacy would be hesitant in dealing with China? Is it inconceivable that data breaches and unauthorized access of data/systems could happen through Chinese employees? These are some of the things you have to think about.
Maybe the Chinese government should look at the year (2019) and realize that personal liberties, sovereignty and privacy are important to the "west". If China is going to disrespect our important values, than what you are seeing in this Gitlab discussion is bound to take place for companies that are sensitive about protecting their customers.
Here we go. "CCP is bad and China is bad, so every Chinese is bad". This kind of logic is not very healthy, it just like saying "Google(Or insert any company here) is bad, let's punish their employees", it will hurt those employees (way) more than it hurt Google.
Put the story into context, if Chinese engineers cannot find a job oversea, they will probably go back to China and contribute to a Chinese company that operate under CCP's rule. Will that be a good thing for you eventually?
I bet CCP is also counting on the rising nationalism in the US as well, to drive Chinese engineers back home with their valuable knowledge.
I wouldn't care if the project is targeted to China. But it is donated to The Linux Foundation. The Linux Foundation should have not accepted such projects at the beginning.
I'm Korean and there is nothing to do with China itself. But the more we accept projects like this, the more they like to write in their language. What's worst is that their Github issue page will be full of Chinese that other people will not understand. I don't want to see the programming culture get fragmented just because of the language.
Since the project is mainly done by Tencent, a Chinese company, it just make since for the project to use Chinese. I see no point for their team members to communicate with one and other by writing documents in a second language everyday.
Also, they've provided English document if you want to read, and the document is not bad. If you don't like the document, then send them some PR.