From what we know about how the emoji blocking was implemented for mainland China, I doubt it's a benign feature just being misused:
https://objective-see.com/blog/blog_0x34.html
Notably, the code specifically looks for the "CN" locale, and calls "removeEmoji".
Wow, that is depressing. I would definitely be ashamed to implement a feature like that.
I could easily imagine (especially at a place like Apple where there's a ton of internal secrecy), the ticket for implementing removeEmoji() could have been pitched in a much broader fashion: perhaps there would be a "child mode" that would remove the middle finger emoji and others like that.
You want to ensure your design team and product matches the demographic you're trying to target so you can choose which ones are approved for that area. Completely reasonable, not a malicious feature to build either.
Except when it prevents you from selling your device in China.