What does totalitarianism have to do with them doing business? China produces stuff I want. And increasingly, China produces stuff China wants. This is business.
There will never be a world war again, the US cannot sustain a real war against China at all, it will just use nukes (or China will). Why do Americans fantasize about war so much?!
China produces almost nothing I want unless you count foreign-designed products that happen to be manufactured there under contract. Maybe steel and rare earth metals?
I've tried their flagship apps too (WeChat, Alipay, Alibaba, AliExpress) and they are just really awful compared to their Western equivalents. Not just in subjective look-and-feel ways either: the AliExpress signup flow was so broken in their iOS app that I had to switch to a web browser to sign up!
That they're useful and popular in China is something that has occurred in spite of their awful tech. More through great business development and exploiting a total lack of entrenched non-tech competition like credit cards, consumer banking, malls, Wal-Mart, etc.
There will never be a world war again, the US cannot sustain a real war against China at all, it will just use nukes (or China will). Why do Americans fantasize about war so much?!