Global users can unlock Xiaomi phones, but have to jump through more hoops and deal with restrictions. For example, there now seems to be a daily limit on how many devices their server accepts to unlock. Took me three tries to be successful in the “first come, first serve” line.

Afaik, Chinese users are now dependent on paid services to unlock their phonew for them. How they get around the official restrictions? I don’t know.

More recent Xiaomi phones for the Chinese market have locked bootloaders. Their European counterparts can still be unlocked, but they have tightened that as well, supposedly because the CCP told them to.

Typing this on a Poco F6.

I, too, hate them with a passion.

They were allied, but Japan certainly wasn’t part of the Third Reich.