If I were south africa, I would trust devices built around Chinese baseband modems over those built around US/Korean baseband modems.

The US and FiveEyes paranoia being spread isn’t just projection due to what they themselves are doing but because everyone using their baseband modems is something their intelligence agencies rely on to monitor other nations. When people use Chinese baseband modems, the US loses that access. It is undeniable at this point that the US natsec apparatus mandates baseband modems be backdoored (have been found in Samsung and Qualcomm modems), there is a reason it is the one part of all wireless devices that’s a black box with a closed source embedded operating system totally separate and opaque from the device the modem is installed in.