Good on them for standing up for what’s right on this.

This is one thing Apple has been pretty firm on. You can’t have a secure product and have backdoors. You can try to hide them all you want, but a backdoor will always be a massive security vulnerability.

Respect

I don’t doubt it. Apple would probably just ship a new app called “Texts” or something that only does traditional cell carrier text messages, and then refer customers to third party solutions for video conferencing. A nice explanatory web page on Apple’s website to point customers in the region towards would be the cherry on top.