There are many American companies that capitulate to Chinese political pressure without even being owned by the Chinese. Tencent owns 2 of the top 5 biggest gaming platforms in the US, but the one that got accused of being too close to the Chinese is now owned by Microsoft.

I think the question is why is there an expectation that Tencent is somehow more nefarious than any other billion dollar conglomerate?

"the onus is very much on the other side to continually demonstrate a lack of influence/bias."

does 10 years of lack of influence count? Like, all Tencent did was try to make some LoL mobile game in china (in Unity, ironically enough). That's the one thing I can't imagine Riot/Epic doing without influence. But that's not really a smoking gun. China, mobile market huge, LoL big IP. No effect on LoL proper outside of the devs working on it.

Tencent don't seem to be the kind of company that cares about sticking fingers in the pudding of what works. They invest in successful companies and help other companies (including Sony and Nintendo) operate within China. At this point it feels like the skepticism is unwarranted.

Maybe you could start with what kind of evidence would convince you? It seems like you're asking Tim Sweeney to prove a negative, which is difficult.

I don't think "blind faith" is fair - I just haven't seen any reason to believe Epic is controlled by Chinese interests.