One of the nice things about the App Store (viz a viz Android) was that you did *not* need to go this whole arduous route, find a publisher, etc. for China and could just go direct via the store. I would think this would affect lots of indie devs making money there.

As far as I know, all the indies that I know who are selling games in China actually do use a publisher though instead of doing it themselves.

It's such a different market to the west -- there isn't just a single app store like Google Play / etc, so it's a lot of work to get your game onto as many of their app stores as possible. Their spending patterns are different, so the same monetization strategies don't apply. If you have a free-to-play / freemium game, it needs to be re-balanced for china. Their gameplay preferences are different - gameplay often needs to be re-tweaked for China. Response to marketing is different - advertising / artwork often needs to be re-done. Legislation is very different -- stuff like this happens!! etc... All of this makes partnering up with a local publisher a smart move.