The article is misleading. Apple has not given the iCloud encryption keys to the Chinese government. As far as I'm aware, there is currently no evidence that the Chinese government is any more capable of accessing iCloud data than any other government.
From a later article from the same source, Apple states: "Apple has not created nor were we requested to create any backdoors and Apple will continue to retain control over the encryption keys to iCloud data"
GCBD, a state-owned company, certainly gives the Chinese government the ability to see all iCloud data. It is technically true that if the Chinese government sends a data request to Apple, Apple can try to push back within the legal system, but why would they send a data request to Apple when they can get unfettered access from GCBD?
As far as who controls the keys for decrypting iCloud data at rest, I cannot believe that Chinese iCloud data would be sent encrypted to Apple's servers outside of China to be encrypted for rest with Apple-controlled keys and sent back to GCBD servers for storage and then sent to Apple's servers outside of China for decryption after verifying it is a user authorized request and back encrypted for the user when the user requests the data (and the same for all operations on the data like indexing). The keys absolutely must exist in China under GCBD's control.
From a later article from the same source, Apple states: "Apple has not created nor were we requested to create any backdoors and Apple will continue to retain control over the encryption keys to iCloud data"
https://money.cnn.com/2018/02/28/technology/apple-icloud-dat...
I'm not saying it's not concerning, and China can still request a particular users data, but let's be accurate.