I wouldn't trust a manufacturer-installed system to be honest
Given the size of the userbase I doubt they'd invest in developing and adding preinstalled similar adware as their windows OEM systems but you never know
The real answer is it is, among other things, an economic tool
The alternative was having the big US techs invade china economically, along with the mass propaganda from capitalist entities (chief among them the US, always pursuing efforts to destabilize China) that would have followed
You don't speak to actual Chinese citizens often, do you ? basically all young people there have VPNs, and nobody cares. Like, at all
For the Filelist thing I prefer CLI tools generally (and all the export formats I've seen in the features seem perfectly doable through them); but your answer about XNViewMP definitely has merits, thanks ! I'll take a look at it
There is also this one; it's an actual genuine Windows 95 running on WASM in your browser