I get that Huawei, or ZTE are not a good idea for network infrastructure, and that phones for people in governments, military, large corps and research environments, should be vetted, but for average Joe? Many Chinese manufacturers don’t have close ties to the government, and any non Chinese phone that you can buy also has backdoors, and quite frankly, for average Joe, their local government may be scarier than the chinese gorvernment. Also, your data is being used by the Googles, Microsofts, Apples, etc… in vast quantities daily. We are the product generally.
Also, remember that most brands manufacture in China, and there are ways to substitute components where the brand would be unsuspecting of the switch.
I have been using Chinese high end phones for the last 6-7 years, and let me tell you, they can make some top notch kit.
Do you have a real, good reason to not buy Chinese phones?(I mean brand. Most likely you own a phone made in China, anyway).
The intelligence apparatus of the West has gotten up to some hinky things in the past, but 1. Not to the same degree by a long shot when it comes to end user devices (they’re far more likely to monitor communications from datacenters and cooperative platforms) and 2. Even if you’re already compromised by 1 nation state, why would you want to be compromised by 2?