None of the high end chips were made in Chinese fabs, and the device barely qualifies as a “laptop” besides the form factor. For some bizarre reason they used a USB5744 USB 3.2 5Gb/s hub chip, which tells me the following:

• Their CPU doesn’t even have multiple USB3 interfaces
• Their CPU doesn’t even have a single 10GB/s USB interface, which has been standard for may years
• They don’t really care about using local parts only, because they have alternative products like the GL3590

Unless We get better close up tear down photos, this devices primary purpose is propaganda

There is a UFS-II specification and even a PCIe version specifically for micro SD cards. It was all planned out, and it would have been trivial to tell consumers: “Yo need card with more contacts as shown in picture”. But no, the biggest manufacturer of flash storage is samsung, and they decided they’d rather sell higher storage capacity phones as a premium. Easy to do when you’re the second biggest manufacturer of of phones and apple already paved the way.

Do not use “paste” that already has a low viscosity at room temp, it will get more liquid as it heats up. Good thermal paste doesn’t even cost much, and a syringe last for years of regular service on multiple devices. Repasting is not difficult.