It looks like this has been beaten to death, but I'll give my $0.02. It does seem really odd that to me that a US company would host a telemetry and/or control system in China...unless...read more below.
I have some real world experience with servers in various parts of the world (including China) and so I've been able to see a little behind the curtain about how information storage services work in different regions of the world.
Probably the most straightforward place to run your service if you are a US company is in the US. The US regulations seem to be more relaxed than the EU or China with regards to running an online service if there is data being stored. I can't speak to other factors, but if your data is being stored and it can be personally identified then there are rules that govern a bunch of aspects of handling that data and running the service in the data center.
In China, I don't think there's any problem hosting data that belongs to citizens of another country who do not live in China in a non-China country. In other words, if you don't live in China, I don't really think China cares what you do with your data. If you do live in China, then China does care and they have rules about how services that store the data must operate.
In the EU (and maybe GB, not 100% sure post Brexit) they also have some specific rules when a company holds data that belongs to you, and some of the rules are tighter than the rules of the US (this is my understanding).
The US, even though a relatively large and modern country, is more like the Wild West. There are rules, but things (currently) seemed to be in favor of entrepreneur - a bit more lassie faire in terms of what people can do. If it's health data or financial data, all bets are off and the rules are pretty strict. But if it's data from your inverter and it's stored with your user account online, I think the rules are minimal; you probably need to be notified if there is a data breach, etc. But I don't think there is much else. I'm not even sure you are legally required to be notified, it probably depends on what type of data was breached.
As for a US company putting data from US citizens onto servers that are hosted in China, well the rules of China apply. Those are probably not the same rules that most Americans are used to. If China says to a Chinese company "Give us your records on this data" I think the company, if Chinese, is going to comply. If they are not a Chinese company, then I think it could become very complicated for said company. Again, I'm not saying they are bad rules, but given a choice, American customers might not be comfortable having their data governed by Chinese government rules. This is partially a cultural thing I think, being an American myself and thinking about privacy. But I do think that the Chinese should have the right to do their rules the way that they (collectively) see fit for themselves. Honestly I am not sure if most Chinese citizens really care about how their government handles their data; if they are happy with it who then am I to tell them they are wrong? (I would need citations or statistics here to prove/disprove this type of statement)
So finally, why would they (Sol-Ark) do it? I do not think that it would be more convenient for a US company to write their inverter controller's firmware and then host the telemetry service in AliCloud, compared to doing the same and hosting the service in Amazon AWS (I mean obviously if your data is stored in China that is not typically a selling point to most Americans). But
if they didn't write the controller's firmware and someone in China did, then that WOULD make sense to me why it would be hosted in China. If you live in China and you write software, you and your company will probably have a practice of using a Chinese cloud. It's kind of natural.
Again, this is purely my opinion, I could be 100% wrong, and even if I'm right _what_does_it_matter_? I'm just trying to explain why it might be the way that it appears to be. I'm sure my personal data is already in AliCloud because I buy things from AliExpress (and Amazon). I've seen tons of stellar reviews of Sol-Ark inverters on YouTube, so it seems like the inverters are good. If anyone does have a legitimate concern I would just do what someone already suggested and either unplug/disconnect the network connection or block outbound traffic from the inverter to the internet. To be honest if they (Sol-Ark) really wanted to keep using a service in China but they wanted to disguise it they could just host a proxy in the US that your inverter connects to and receives from while they actually tunnel all of the data across the ocean to China. And if they did a good job about it you wouldn't know any better.
I think if you like the Sol-Ark inverter then you should buy it. If China does take over your inverter at some point in the future (AND I'M NOT SAYING THAT THEY CAN!), then you, me and everyone else has bigger problems to worry about.
Ok, I hope I didn't get anyone upset (Including Sol-Ark). Honestly we need a good old fashioned invasion from Klaxon so that humans can finally unite and agree on something
Cheers
PS - I've added the IPs and associated info that my Victron Cerbo GX is communicating with, just for curious:
35.165.124.40: OrgTechName: Amazon EC2 Network Operations
18.198.160.64: OrgTechName: Amazon EC2 Network Operations
52.28.98.25: OrgTechName: Amazon EC2 Network Operations
18.196.62.11: OrgTechName: Amazon EC2 Network Operations