>Do you have an address for the person in the Chinese legislature that I should be writing to, to pass the relevant law?
In a global market and considering a universal hardware platform, cooperation from any specific polity is entirely unnecessary. It is sufficient merely to convince one single polity that cannot be abandoned. America or the EU would do it. Both are markets that Apple absolutely cannot give up, and of course the former also has direct legal jurisdiction over the majority of Apple.
You also seem to be extremely confused about what I actually suggested should be legislated:
>I'm arguing with the underlying problem. I'm suggesting that passing laws against app stores is not a practical solution.
I never suggested that "App Stores should be banned", that's ridiculous. What I said is that Apple (or any other entity) should be required to offer (for free or at a reasonable fee [1]) owners a cert/key they can use to sign arbitrary software to run on their device indefinitely. That's it, though it might make sense to require that developers be offered that as well. That alone could be sufficient to serve as a foundation for various non-Apple implementations of side loading, up to and including full 3rd party App Stores. The point isn't that Apple wouldn't still have their own App Store, nor even that it wouldn't still be by far the preeminent choice. It's merely that there'd be a core level steam release valve available.
So in that scenario the actions of the Chinese (or any other) government would revert to the same as any standard computer: within their own borders they could pursue all legal and technical avenues their government wished, but people could try to go around it. A bypass of the great firewall (or merely a tourist visit outside of the country) would be sufficient to gain a key which could then be used on an iDevice within China (or anywhere else). Apple would simply not be involved in that, instead it'd be between a government and its people again.
The same would apply even beyond government, for example Apple doesn't allow certain content that is perfectly legal but not family-friendly enough on the App Store anywhere. A legal requirement that owners may sign software to run on their own devices would create an alternative.
----
1: which can be a thing in law, no "of course you can do it on your $500 device for $1 million" stuff.
In a global market and considering a universal hardware platform, cooperation from any specific polity is entirely unnecessary. It is sufficient merely to convince one single polity that cannot be abandoned. America or the EU would do it. Both are markets that Apple absolutely cannot give up, and of course the former also has direct legal jurisdiction over the majority of Apple.
You also seem to be extremely confused about what I actually suggested should be legislated:
>I'm arguing with the underlying problem. I'm suggesting that passing laws against app stores is not a practical solution.
I never suggested that "App Stores should be banned", that's ridiculous. What I said is that Apple (or any other entity) should be required to offer (for free or at a reasonable fee [1]) owners a cert/key they can use to sign arbitrary software to run on their device indefinitely. That's it, though it might make sense to require that developers be offered that as well. That alone could be sufficient to serve as a foundation for various non-Apple implementations of side loading, up to and including full 3rd party App Stores. The point isn't that Apple wouldn't still have their own App Store, nor even that it wouldn't still be by far the preeminent choice. It's merely that there'd be a core level steam release valve available.
So in that scenario the actions of the Chinese (or any other) government would revert to the same as any standard computer: within their own borders they could pursue all legal and technical avenues their government wished, but people could try to go around it. A bypass of the great firewall (or merely a tourist visit outside of the country) would be sufficient to gain a key which could then be used on an iDevice within China (or anywhere else). Apple would simply not be involved in that, instead it'd be between a government and its people again.
The same would apply even beyond government, for example Apple doesn't allow certain content that is perfectly legal but not family-friendly enough on the App Store anywhere. A legal requirement that owners may sign software to run on their own devices would create an alternative.
----
1: which can be a thing in law, no "of course you can do it on your $500 device for $1 million" stuff.