In China, all mobile phones including Samsung and Apple have a lot of spyware built in, even cars can record sound and video at any time, any software in China including the app store itself does not follow their own privacy policy at all, usually in China, we will buy US/JP/TW Apple or Google phones on Goofish (a china second-hand trading platform, but can find new products), Taobao or anywhere else, some people will buy Sony phones and install /e/OS, Anyway samsung is not a good choice in China, I know you don’t understand China, you just need to imagine that this is a large North Korea, in fact, holding a Google phone is not necessarily in danger, because it can be bought in China in many ways, I think what should be paid more attention to is whether the data in the phone is sensitive, the Proton you mentioned is a good idea, but because Proton VPN has leaked the IP address of French activists, I personally don’t trust any of Proton’s services, I use NextCloud