I don't think this is remotely credible. Without some evidence it's just scare mongering (although I find it hard to take anyone who automatically jumps to saying CCP when talking about China seriously)

Anyway, as someone without even the remotest business or personal connections to China, if someone is spying on me I hope it's them, rather than someone who can actually impact my life

I think GP was referring to SuperFish,

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superfish

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9072424 ("Lenovo Caught Installing Adware on New Computers")

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9074110 ("Extracting the SuperFish certificate")

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9524536 ("Class action lawsuit filed against Lenovo over Superfish")

etc.

This seems to be a windows spyware, the OP refers specifically to hardware, and this discussion is about linux so I don't think he was referring to Superfish.

Incidentally, the OP is troll account with -3 Karma so I think he was just trolling anyway, I didn't notice that when I first replied.

Yeah CCP shills do say that to those who oppose them ;)