China would even find friends in Cuba, with Hugo Chavez, and monsters who want to control speech in Africa.
China has investments all over the world, making for easy friendship with all kinds of despots.
That's true. China has a couple goals: domination of their parts of the world. Control of natural resources wherever they can control. Controlling the internet for their population. Profit (as it supports the other goals). If they can gain financially from controlling the internet they will, maybe by charging those dictators for disabling parts of the internet they don't like. They also have to allow access to the internet or lose out on physical product sales, but more importantly lose on encryption and every other software endeavor.
So they have to keep the internet going for their benefit but restrict speech for their survival and potentially for profit.