>On analysis of the file, I found that the vast majority of the records are actually related to sex, porn, and other smartphone brands. There are mentions of Tibet, Hong Kong, and other religious groups, however, mentions of the CCP and “China” are also included, too (albeit there are a lot fewer mentions of China and Chinese politicians comparatively). One would think that if this were a list that exists to censor content that may go against the Chinese Communist Party, all mentions of “China” would not be censored online.
It appears more likely that the phone is tracking sentiment and mentions of items on the list, as opposed to applying it as a strict list of censored phrases, and that's far more dangerous to users (obviously censorship would still be bad regardless).
Having worked at a competing Chinese smartphone brand, I can say that there exists legal requirements for controlling content (i.e. yellow and political content as well as mentions of competitors) that is published on your own platforms. This is mainly a legal requirement for the Chinese market, with added on requirements from in-house legal teams, and this get applied on overseas markets when launching a piece of software there.
It is much more likely that it is basically just a list of words and phrases. The in-house content security system we had was extremely rudimentary, especially in languages other than Chinese.
There must be something worse than lead in drinking water is the most wholesome explanation I could come up with blunders and blindness like this...