Even regardless of whether it's all photos or all matched photos, the issue is that Apple is actively and publicly building adversarial black boxes that run on your device, on a OS level (on iOS AND macs!), with the sole and explicit goal of snitching on you to the government for possessing information that is deemed wrong.
The actual specifics of what material is currently deemed wrong is irrelevant, because it will be expanded.
This. Is. Not Okay.
This is something you'd expect China to mandate, not a Western company like Apple to advertise as a feature.
I don't see why this is surprising at all. Apple has never cared about the privacy of their Chinese users.
Privacy was never a principle for them, merely a marketing feature for technically illiterate westerners.
The actual specifics of what material is currently deemed wrong is irrelevant, because it will be expanded.
This. Is. Not Okay.
This is something you'd expect China to mandate, not a Western company like Apple to advertise as a feature.