They position themselves as a thought leader and ethical company, but when push comes to shove, will do whatever it takes to get market access.

One way to look at it is what is best in the real world for actual Chinese citizens. On one hand we have Apple, who generally does the bare minimum to comply with Chinese regulations and occasionally picks its battles on what things are worth pushing back on and which are worth just dealing with. On the other hand we have every Chinese service provider, all of whom bend over backwards not only to comply with their legal requirements to go above and beyond to do whatever the party wants. The government doesn't even really need to censor people's chats because the companies happily do it themselves.

Are Chinese citizens better off without iMessage and FaceTime, fully end-to-end encrypted services? Are they better off with a phone that is sending all of their usage data to a Chinese company?

Apple could refuse to operate in the Chinese market on principle and feel very haughty about itself, but that wouldn't make the life of its former customers any better.