Why do my Apple devices want to connect to China?

[Powerbooky]

OK... for years I'm used to the sheer amount of attempts to find open ports on my IP address by Chinese bots/hackers each hour.

But today I saw something new in the firewall reports from my network. For some odd reason the HomePod mini's try to connect to a China Telecom CDN (datacenter). Why? We're in Europe, enough CDN's much closer.

Most IP's don't resolve to a hostname, but some do like this one: 202.209.221.60.adsl-pool.sx.cn
Not really a typical FQDN of a datacenter.

Here two address ranges that popped up in the firewall reports. Of course these were blocked immediately.

inetnum:        124.236.0.0 - 124.239.255.255
netname:        CHINANET-HE
descr:          CHINANET hebei province network
descr:          China Telecom
descr:          No.31,jingrong street
descr:          Beijing 100032
country:        CN
admin-c:        BR3-AP
tech-c:         CH93-AP
abuse-c:        AC1573-AP
status:         ALLOCATED PORTABLE

inetnum:        60.220.0.0 - 60.223.255.255
netname:        UNICOM-SX
descr:          China Unicom Shanxi Province Network
descr:          China Unicom
country:        CN
admin-c:        CH1302-AP
tech-c:         XH63-AP
remarks:        service provider
mnt-by:         APNIC-HM
mnt-lower:      MAINT-CNCGROUP-SX
mnt-routes:     MAINT-CNCGROUP-RR
status:         ALLOCATED PORTABLE

Anyone seen the same behaviour since HomePod OS 17.1?