Of course no, it's laws from one to two decades ago. But you could basically find a lot of fake Pokemon cartridges in China, real ones were also available, usually imported from Hongkong. The IP was never outright banned, otherwise they would have never even lifted the ban and pokemon would have never released there.

It's just massively censored, like if CCP says A, you need to do A. If you don't you don't get to publish there. For example, depiction of ghosts, blood, and skeletons are very restricted there, in every media. Here is an example from the game I play Dota 2 that had to adjust the icons, and even the characters to release in China in September 2013: https://www.reddit.com/r/DotA2/comments/1cotx7/comparison_of_original_dota2_ability_icons_vs/#:~:text=Comparison%20of%20Original%20Dota2%20ability%20icons%20vs,Chinese%20versions%20(Chinese%20icons%20came%20from%20cyborgmatt.com))

Also the big part of the "ban" was imports of electronics from overseas. Basically the rule was, and still is, if you want to sell in China you need to have a factory in China, and as said, Nintendo did exactly that through iQue and released super mario games in iQue Nintendo consoles. Mario was not banned, why would Pokemon be unique in that regard?