One of them xiamenese used to live in the Far East and is a scholar of Chinese so is somewhat of an authority on all things Chinese.
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Privacy knows no borders. I can understand that China generates more uncertainty than other countries, but no country in the world behaves ethically with its citizens. Big US tech companies like Apple, Microsoft or Google employ equally harmful practices every day against citizens around the world. Many people seem to think that “espionage” is only bad when the information ends up in the hands of the “enemy” not the our “wonderful country”. Note: I’m a Spaniard.
In this sense, the only governments that do “something” for the privacy of users are the European ones. If it weren’t for them, we wouldn’t even have a minimally universal USB because “it hurts innovation”. Right?
Big business seeks control and monopoly. Techniques like DRM do not seek to preserve the copyright of authors or artists, only that consumers are dependent on a platform (Amazon, Kobo, Apple Books, Barnes & Noble, etc.). For this reason, each company uses its own formats and DRM and they are incompatible with the others.
Regards.
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How does a mandatory USB-C port improve privacy? 
I mean a bit of legislation is required for companies to adopt standards. In Europe, for example, companies must comply with a three-year guarantee on their products. Otherwise, each one would try to “parcel” its users and this only harms us, since buying a computer or mobile device would be like marrying a company due to incompatibility of wires, ports, formats, etc. Of all, Apple is the most notorious in this regard for consumer computing. It doesn’t fit my head that they even have a special proprietary format for screenshots and now they are trying to impose their proprietary .heic format, even though there is a new free one, .jpgxl, that surpasses it by far in its specifications. Large companies do not look for “the best” but how to “better tie” their users. That is what I intend to point out.
Regards. 
Except they don’t? PNG is supported everywhere.
HEIC (HEIF) isn’t even Apple’s format and it’s easy to convert on all major platforms. Maybe JPEG XL is better, but when you see this: “Support for JPEG XL in Chromium and Chrome web browsers was introduced for testing April 1, 2021 and removed on December 9, 2022.” – not very convincing.
While I share your don’t trust anyone sentiments, you’re in for a big surprise if you give European governments an unwarranted privacy benefit of the doubt because they enforce less cable clutter (which is kind of good). E.g. see: EU’s resolution on encryption foreshadows likely anti-encryption push | Proton
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I think you missed the reason I posted that text, To find out why look upstream in the thread.
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Hi! Apple has patents on HEIC: HEIC Yeah - The Hacker Factor Blog
I know that JPEG XL is no longer supported by Google. I’m afraid it might be a bad anti-competitive practice to promote a new format that is patented by themselves. However, it can continue to improve and to become an interesting option for storing images, since it is the only format that can perform a lossless conversion from JPEG.
I don’t give any government the benefit of the doubt. Honestly, I am often very critical of American users because many of them seem to be extremely complacent about their policies and perceive the rest of the world as “part of the third world”. I’m not saying that for your case, of course. I do not defend nor will I defend any government in the world. Those who wave flags, whatever country they are from, seem naive to me.
Regards.
From a business perspective it doesn’t make much sense to promote a new format that is patented by someone else (or nobody), though. And that’s not bad per se. If someone else can do it cheaper / for free…
It’s no secret that Apple tries to “lock in” (or at least milk a bit more) users at every opportunity. But HEIC is certainly not the most pressing issue. Or at all. The only time I encounter this file format and where it’s “mandatory” is the niche case of “dynamic wallpapers”.
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