Chinese president Xi Jinping has joked that smartphones from Xiaomi might include backdoors.

Xi made the quip on Saturday during the public section of a meeting with South Korean president Lee Jae-myung.

As befits a gracious host, Lee offered gifts for Xi, including a Go board, as both men are reportedly fond of the strategy game.

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Xi’s gift to Lee was a pair of Xiaomi smartphones fitted with screens made in South Korea.

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Lee asked if the connection from the phones is secure. Xi responded by saying Lee should check for backdoors.

Both leaders then had a good chuckle.

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[5]Youtube Video

Backdoors, however, are no laughing matter. Xi surely knows that one reason liberal democracies have shunned China’s top telecoms firms Huawei and ZTE is fears that their devices allow Beijing to snoop on users.

That’s a problem because one of the challenges Xi faces at home is sluggish consumer spending. His government has tried to stimulate the economy by boosting exports. The Register mentions that policy because analysts [6]believe Xiaomi is the world’s third-biggest mobile phone vendor, measured by product shipments, and therefore an export success story.

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China’s president just gave offshore buyers something to think about when buying a new handset.

[8]Pentagon ends Microsoft's use of China-based support staff for DoD cloud

[9]China’s botched Great Firewall upgrade invites attacks on its censorship infrastructure

[10]Wallbleed vulnerability unearths secrets of China's Great Firewall 125 bytes at a time

[11]China calls for realtime censorship of satellite broadband

Then there’s the small matter of the allegedly Beijing-backed Salt Typhoon gang that’s thought to have [12]deeply infiltrated telecoms networks around the world, and deployed backdoors to allow surveillance.

And of course the Internet in China is not secure: Beijing’s [13]Great Firewall enables pervasive surveillance of everything citizens do and say online, leading locals to make [14]obscure references to llamas as a way of expressing their political views.

China also exports its surveillance technology. Analysts believe [15]Pakistan and [16]Cambodia are customers. ®

Bootnote Your correspondent recently bought a Xiaomi smartwatch but returned it after just three days because it periodically became unresponsive, or rebooted for no reason – including in the middle of workouts, which I bought it to monitor. Hopefully the phones Xi gave Lee are less buggy.

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[4] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_security/front&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44aQncx13L8mit-q54wJhBDAAAARM&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0

[5] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z7MFxtSfqoU

[6] https://counterpointresearch.com/en/insights/global-smartphone-share

[7] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_security/front&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=3&c=33aQncx13L8mit-q54wJhBDAAAARM&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26raptor%3Deagle%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0

[8] https://www.theregister.com/2025/08/29/pentagon_ends_microsofts_use_of/

[9] https://www.theregister.com/2025/08/04/china_great_firewall_quic_security_flaws/

[10] https://www.theregister.com/2025/02/27/wallbleed_vulnerability_great_firewall/

[11] https://www.theregister.com/2024/09/30/china_satellite_censorship/

[12] https://www.theregister.com/2025/08/28/fbi_cyber_cop_salt_typhoon/

[13] https://www.theregister.com/2025/08/21/china_port_443_block_outage/

[14] https://www.theregister.com/2021/05/14/chinese_ai_censoring_some_livestreamed/

[15] https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2025/09/pakistan-mass-surveillance-and-censorship-machine-is-fueled-by-chinese-european-emirati-and-north-american-companies/

[16] https://www.rfa.org/english/news/china/internet-repression-exports-04172024133621.html

[17] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/