This is why side-loading and the option for alternative app stores is so crucial. If Apple bans Signal or other E2EE messenger apps from your national app store, you can't get them. Full stop.

If people in China and other privacy-hostile countries can side-load from alternative app stores (like F-droid for Android), the government/Apple doesn't control user access to particular undesireable apps.

There's obviously reverse concerns to this side of the coin but the overall concept has arguably always existed eith jailbreaking (Cydia store, AltStore(?)) and I haven't heard any stories about people becoming massively compromised in the way all the naysayers and Apple would have us believe.