Yep. That's exactly it. Those unnecessary service calls are more likely to be Google-esque services for event tracking and user analytics than spying like U.S has portraited. In the old days when carriers released major smartphones, those will be the equivalent of bloatwares and their supporting services. If the guy examines Samsung Galaxy phones, it would almost be the same. The only difference is probably that TLS adoption are VERY LOW in Chinese market (Surprised? Not for a surveillance heavy society!), hence their services aren't using https as much as it should.