Exactly this. On my Nexus 4 the bootloader was locked by default but all it took to unlock it was running fastboot oem unlock. And here: application forms in Chinese, 10 days' wait, only one device every 30 days, and, best of all, asking for a "reason" why you want to unlock your own phone (must be over 10 characters): how is that any of their business?
They also seem to have switched off root access by default, which would be OK as such but apparently re-enabling it is also a thing that must be done with an Internet connection to Xiaomi so that permission can be obtained.
The most ridiculous thing is that without you they don't have anything to offer to the Western market. Not only does the official "global" MIUI not even include translations to any Western languages besides English, Google Apps, location settings that take advantage of Google's services but even the default "MIUI" font is in fact broken when trying to use extended Latin or Cyryllic charsets, and the Weather app always shows the air quality index even though they don't have data for this outside China, so it's always 0 in other countries. Even details like this they couldn't fix themselves yet now it really loo