I've just passed the 20 year anniversary of my arrival in China. Having lived in at least eight cities over that period and traveled broadly, I would strongly c

I've just passed the 20 year anniversary of my arrival in China. Having lived in at least eight cities over that period and traveled broadly, I would strongly caution against assuming this is a deliberate attack by the vendor, much less the government. The vast majority of Windows instances in China are sourced from pirated distribution media and it is usual for those to be infected. This affects everyone domestically, not just machines shipped out. Furthermore, most apps are pirated with the same issues. Finally, many people's thumb drives touch a plethora of dirty machines (printing shops that support the still largely paper-driven bureaucracy, photography shops, work and home PCs, etc.) and thus are excellent vectors for malware. As usual, Hanlon's razor: resist over-attribution to malice.