“Since passage of the Patriot Act, many companies based outside of the United States have been reluctant to store client information in the U.S.,” said Marc Rotenberg, executive director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center in Washington. “There is an ongoing concern that U.S. intelligence agencies will gather this information without legal process. There is particular sensitivity about access to financial information as well as communications and Internet traffic that goes through U.S. switches.”

Perfectly reasonable assumption

I think it's pretty stupid to assume other countries will not be doing the same thing.

Truth is there is always paranoid elements in every government who want to know everything and anything they can. China being the worst of them.

Actually, based on what I have read about Chinese history, the Communist regime isn't all that different than the Empire (which ended in 1912). Both have autocratic governments and are (were) tightly controlled societies. The main difference is that the Communists pursued Marxist ideology rather than Confucian, but even then, both systems place major emphasis on loyalty to the state. Had there been no Republic from 1912 - 1949, I have to wonder if any Chinese would have been able to tell the difference until the Cultural revolution got underway.