As someone who has watched the increasingly absurd price of laptops over many years in relation to what one should expect for the price, I'd say I have people like you to thank.
stock android apps have sensible default permissions and are modifiable, e.g. clock does not have unmodifiable access to every aspect of your phone. clearer?
Xiaomi phones are insane, at least BlackShark. They replace virtually all the major user level stuff of Android with extreme data collecting alternatives. They then make it so that you cannot disable many of them (via adp, custom ROMs etc.) without bricking the phone, I'm talking wallpaper or clock apps that run with full, non-modifiable privileges. They subsidize cheap hardware with truly insane level of tracking.
They will also stop allowing custom ROMs once they've built up enough reputation, some newer models already will never have custom ROMs.