No, WeChat and Alipay do use FaceID to do payment verification on iPhone.

Maybe they do but at least WeChat have their own face recognition technology, in which case they do hold people's biometric data.

This is not that big a deal in China considering that people have photo ID card, which means that the government already had everyone's biometric data.

Another key difference is that Taiwan Strait is much narrower than the Atlantic Ocean.

Actually for CCP, a major source of legitimacy comes from making economical progress all the time.