China doesn't require pre-installed apps but the Chinese government require all data processing and storage to be conducted within China with complete source code access.

India chose to back off on data sovereignty [0] because it would have had a side effect of making Indian IT Offshoring less competitive plus to help make negotiating a US-India BTA easier [1].

[0] - https://verfassungsblog.de/cross-border-data-flows-and-india...

[1] - https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-04-25/us-seeks-...

>Even in mainland China [..] Apple does not pre-install any apps from anyone.

That's because China has no regulation obliging them to do so.

China takes the other, more comprehensive, route to privacy invasion. Sucking up every bit of data at the router.