Independently of that, an exceedingly large number of countries require visas from Chinese citizens. See https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visa_requirements_for_Chines...

This squares ok with geopolitical reasons, but not economic ones (although they certainly influence that map now and in the future).

I wonder if it is a tit for tat type thing for other folks going to China?

It's hard to know. It's extra hard to know on outgoing as what I heard a while ago from someone from China (hard to know if they were really authoritative) was even if you qualified to go someplace else from inside China... your odds of approval was somewhat random / would ebb and flow.

Its definitely partially a tit for tat bargaining thing. Just like the EU was recently looking at doing an ESTA-lite for US