You're not lying about the Chinesium garbage out there. Seems they'll tool up to make anything.
There were all kinds of running changes 1970-74, and there were some CA-only things thrown in there too.
It is pretty typical for these to have become a bit of a butchered frankenstein mess of hodge podge parts. Lots of folks used things interchangeably without actually taking the time to figure out what was really the same, and what was different.
Going from memory:
Your 1971
should have an AE engine code, which is a 1.6L (1600) dual port engine, with flat top pistons, big head studs, no "case savers", doghouse oil cooler, early type 34mm Solex carb, a generator, an oil bath air cleaner, and an "open" breather system (aka the draft tube).
I am not 100% certain on the changes to the evap system, but pretty sure your car should have three hoses to the canister in the RR fender well. The small one is from the tank in front, the two large ones are the air flow purging tubes. One comes from the fan shroud, where a small portion of the engine cooling fan's air blows out, through the hose, through the canister, and then out of the canister back into the air cleaner assembly inlet tube.
Essentially the canister "traps" any fumes, then when the engine is started they are pushed through and into the engine to be burned. Pretty simple system, but these often get hacked off and/or forgotten about.
The 009 distributor was a common power mod way back when, it was essentially taken from the Transporters. But the advance curve is pretty awful right off idle, and can cause that dreaded flat spot if the engine is maybe under carb'd or not timed correctly. The best way I can tell you to time them that works well is to run the engine at 2500 RPMs, and time it so that the mark lands right where the belt meets the pulley on the lefthand (advanced) side of the engine. Disregard trying to set it at idle. And for the 009 to work with a stock carb, you'll need to have the base idle a bit on the high side. The vacuum advance really works better, and some engines got the retarder side too that was run directly to manifold vacuum. This was really more of an emissions control device more than any, as it pushed the advance plate full retard when the throttle was snapped closed. But those were not really used when there was a damper on the throttle linkage keeping it from snapping all the way closed anyways.
Much of the little emissions "tweaks" that they did in the early '70s had very little impact overall, and often ended up causing more problems than it solved. One of which is the 34mm carb, which while bigger than the 30mm it replaced (the one used on the single port 1500 and 1600 engines) it got an extra, separate idle circuit that was smaller. Which, when in perfect working order, meant those bigger carbs fed less fuel into the engine when under light load and at idle. Which was great for fuel economy, except the pilot circuit was SO small that they plugged up easily, causing them to run lean and sag and misfire at light loads. A common trick was to drill out that jet a bit, to allow a fatter mixture down low. This issue can compound the 009 problem, and make for a pretty poor running engine.
One of the popular VW magazines had a GREAT article years back about going through the 34 carb and fixing its shortcomings. In general it is a decent setup, and simple.
Another thing to look for, and likely not much of an issue in your neck of the woods, but can cause lots of cold weather problems is the heat riser tube clogging up and causing a no-flow of exhaust through under the intake manifold. Of course, when people put "headers" on these engines, even though the pipes allowed for the heat riser to attach, they did not flow at all, and caused them to clog up in short order.
Gosh, thinking of all this makes me like the '75-up L-jet Beetles so much more. Even though they were a bit clunky due to tight real estate in the engine bay, they did work well in that they always started right up hot or cold, never a flat spot or anything at all like that, and were reasonably simple even if a lot of people were perplexed by them at the time. Of course, the rest of the engine was so detuned by then they really were no peppier, and they were not at all responsive to any power mods, mainly due to the fact they used the same size valves as the 1200cc 40hp engines.