Technology

It just seems like Chinese privacy and data protection regulations haven't caught up yet so Chinese mobile phone companies are abusing that in China:

In this work we study the Chinese version of the Android OS distributions run by Xiaomi, Realme, and OnePlus handsets. We measure the network traffic the handsets generate when in-use by a privacy-aware consumer. We find that these devices come bundled with a number of third-party applications, some of which are granted dangerous runtime permissions by default without user consent, and transmit traffic containing a broad range of geolocation, user-profile and social relationships PII to both phone vendors and third-party domains, without notifying the user or offering the choice to opt-out. In contrast, the data shared by the Global version of the firmware is mostly limited to device-specific information.

It's awful but "Chinese spyware" claims make it sound like sneaky sinister Chinese have spun a world-wide web to spy on people all over the globe but that is not what is happening. I hope Chines phone companies become less abusive and exploitative towards their paying customers though.

Without getting into the specifics: China has no reason or desire to alienate most of the world, they want friendly relations more than anything else. Here's the US's proven mass surveillance record, so they should not be trusted when it comes to making claims against their enemies.

US tech companies have had a near monopoly over social media, operating systems, and hardware dev, making these claims nothing more than projection, in an attempt to alienate the PRC from potential allies as part of the US trade war against China.

Also a bonus vid about the Chinese firewall and why they rightly don't allow US surveillance state platforms to operate inside China, and no country should.

These claims are always hilarious knowing all the back doors and spyware the CIA and FBI require in every phone allowed in the US.

The US perpetuates these myths as projection.

Interestingly enough the EU wants to put spyware or encryption backdoors on every device to check in on what people are sending via private message.

Since others already addressed the specific, I'll focus on it as more of a general principle thing:

Essentially, westerners need to come down to earth. They are raised in a culture of superiority that acts like the west is the center of the universe. In post WWII US hegemony, this may have been the case in terms of global power, but it still didn't mean westerners were superior, it just meant they had more guns. Even that part is changing. China is advancing in technology and productive capacity at a rate that only a socialist project can do, with a significant focus on addressing people's needs rather than pure profit. While the US continues to work on color revolutions, sanctions, and generally warring and bombing other countries, either directly or through proxies (ex: israel), China is staunch on not being a militarily or economically interventionist power, who throws its weight around in order to coerce the world into doing what it wants. While the US uses its broad reach on virtual platforms in other communities in order to aid in controlling them, there is yet to be any evidence of China doing similar.

China is leading the way in an alternative world power dynamic, one aimed at mutual benefit. They are living in the future technologically. They are overall looking after their people. And with all of this in mind, we are supposed to believe that China wants to gather data on us, so that they can checks notes convince us to vote for John Racist 2 instead of John Racist 1? It's a real "I don't even know who you are" moment, you know. If it wasn't for the western empire trying to undermine, encircle, and destroy China and any other liberation effort that threatens imperial hegemony, China would not even need to care that it exists. Even still, China does not need to care offensively, in the sense of trying to undermine and they have shown over and over that their "offense" is more of a thing of strengthening themselves and others who would ally with them, rather than try to destroy others. So what is there to fear?

Nothing significant. The real thing to fear, which westerners are chronically in denial about, is their own governments. Their governments which do gather data on them and use it for control, which don't want them getting ideas about real freedoms in life through actually getting their needs met, which would always rather their fear be pointed outward than hit too close to home and come to terms with how shitty their country is.

Depending on your definition of spyware, quite a few Xiaomi phones do in fact come with buckets upon buckets of advertisements built in. One of the reasons I nuke every Xiaomi I get and install lineageOS