That is irrelevant when it comes to iCloud China. iCloud in China is owned and operated by the government of Guizhou. They own the building, the servers, and the private keys.

I'm aware of iCloud in China.

If a user chooses not to use cloud, could this mechanism still allow protestors sharing videos to be identified?

EDIT: Or is this mechanism only for giving Apple the green light to pop open images already stored on the cloud (in which case you're right, the whole conversation is irrelevant)

EDIT2:

looks like this is just for giving apple the green light to open up uploaded images - which is irrelevant in China because they can already do that

The CSAM hash utility was to pop open images in an encrypted iCloud, or witch china (nor the US) have today.

There’s no reason that the tech couldn’t be used on non-iCloud images in china. But by that logic, they could just force-ably upload images in china and forget the whole hashing nonsense.

I would presume on-device software updates come from the same mechanism.