alt Hacker News>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.
The GFW is certainly looking for traffic to block, but it is not really going to invade much privacy, as it cannot decrypt anything using HTTPS/TLS.