Apple and the China riots
Apple had a role in the recent demonstrations in China:
AirDrop, the file-sharing feature on iPhones and other Apple devices, has helped protestors in many authoritarian countries evade censorship. That’s because AirDrop relies on direct connections between phones, forming a local network of devices that don’t need the internet to communicate. People can opt into receiving AirDrops from anyone else with an iPhone nearby…
Apple didn’t respond to questions about the AirDrop change. It plans to make the “Everyone for 10 Minutes” feature a global standard next year, according to Bloomberg…
But why did Apple rush out the change unannounced, in an unassuming update to iOS in early November, and apply it only to Chinese iPhones? One clue may lie in what happened the month prior, when Xi Jinping’s anointment to a third term as China’s leader was met with rare displays of public dissent…
Apple has repeatedly helped China control dissent, mostly by removing apps that protestors have used to coordinate, communicate, or gather information. (Quartz’s iOS app was removed by Apple, at China’s request, at the height of the 2019 protests in Hong Kong.)
China is a huge market for Apple. Plus, there’s this:
Protests have erupted at the world’s biggest iPhone factory in the Chinese city of Zhengzhou, according to footage circulated widely online.
Videos show hundreds of workers marching, with some confronted by people in hazmat suits and riot police.
Those livestreaming the protests said workers were beaten by police. Videos also showed clashes…
Last month, rising Covid cases saw the site locked down, prompting some workers to break out and go home. The company then recruited new workers with the promise of generous bonuses.
Footage shared on a livestreaming site showed workers shouting: “Defend our rights! Defend our rights!”
Other workers were seen smashing surveillance cameras and windows with sticks.
“They changed the contract so that we could not get the subsidy as they had promised. They quarantine us but don’t provide food,” said one Foxconn worker during his live stream.
Recently I was thinking about the early days of the rapprochement with China during the Nixon era. Remember those table tennis tournaments with players from a country we knew so little about? Remember the reassurances that China would become more like us as it industrialized and interacted more and more with the West? I don’t recall much if any discussion of the idea that the influence would be working the other way around, and that we’d become more and more like them. And yet that seems to be the case.
Here’s Mike Pompeo in 2020 on the Nixon opening:
Pompeo didn’t want to directly undermine Nixon’s supposed accomplishment. “I want to be clear that he did what he believed was best for the American people at the time, and he may well have been right,” Pompeo said of Nixon’s diplomacy with the Chinese.
Pompeo’s use of the word “may” was telling. Maybe Nixon was right—or maybe he wasn’t. Given the substance of his speech, it is quite possible that Pompeo thinks Nixon was wrong…
“The kind of engagement we have been pursuing has not brought the kind of change inside of China that President Nixon had hoped to induce,” Pompeo said. He later added a stark warning: “If the free world doesn’t change—doesn’t change, communist China will surely change us.” Again, one suspects Pompeo may think Nixon got it wrong.
The whole article is well worth reading. It also purports to explain what China wanted from letting the US in during Nixon’s tenure.
NOTE: There were some people who weren’t pleased with Nixon’s China advances early on, however. There was some opposition from conservatives, but it had to do with a perceived betrayal of Taiwan involved in making nice to mainland China. Nor do I think China’s entry into the Western sweepstakes could have been long postponed, anyway.
We’ve been totally compromised by the ChiComs. DiFi had a Chinese spy as her driver for your. They stole all sorts of our tech. Eric Swallow (D. CA) has banged Fang Fang; another Chinese spy. Joe Biden was bribed by a small amount of money. Hollywood is deeply corrupted by the Chinese. The NBA kow tows to the CCP.
Think back. We had very little economic engagement with the USSR. It worked. The USSR is no more. We should have mostly isolated China.
I knew we were in big trouble when I heard that Hank Paulson, CEO of Goldman Sachs, learned Mandarin.
I predict China will attack Tawain in the next two years. Not like Joe will stop them.
China’s ascent from poverty and the madness of Mao’s Cultural Revolution to its position of near-hegemony today after only two generations of economic and technological development (state-capitalist and aided by much industrial espionage and unfair trade practices, but impressive nonetheless) might never have happened had it not been for the efforts of Nixon and Kissinger. Such indeed are the ironies of history.
Apple is also supposedly considering removing Twitter from their app store due to Elon Musk’s various free speech favoring activities. Apple certainly seem like big fans of authoritarian suppression.
Nixon was practicing what later on became known as “triangulation.” His calculation was that by engaging the Chinese he could further undermine the USSR. Unbeknownst to Nixon however was that the Soviet Union was decaying badly during the Brezhnev years, even though it would take a little more time and a good hard shove from Reagan to finish the job.
Now we have a competitor/adversary that is much more formidable than the Soviets were, and it didn’t have to be that way. Some of it is due to our own greed, some of it is due to our own stupidity, and some is due to our own politics (some might argue that #2 and #3 are the same thing). Nixon had no way of anticipating what any of his successors might do, but as Enoch Powell observed “the supreme function of statesmanship is to provide against preventable evils,” and by that metric every president since Bush 41 has been a failure. China may have eventually become an industrial superpower, but without our help it might have been put off for another generation or two.
Peggy Noonan of the WSJ wrote a piece a few years back when she realized that many corporate executives were no longer US patriots. Global citizens, so to speak.
If it wasn’t for our Constitution and our military, the US wouldn’t exist as it does today. Those global citizens are horrible ingrates and idiots.
We owe a debt we can never repay to our Founding Fathers. And that traitor, criminal and idiot Joe Biden holds the same office as George Washington, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson and James Madison. We have fallen a long way.
Not too much to ask that our President not be bribed by foreigners, is it now?
Nixon’s opening to China was brilliant strategy during the Cold War, a classic divide-and-conquer move. The turning point should have been the Tien An Men Square massacre which ironically and tragically took place the same year the Berlin Wall fell. With the Soviet Union collapsing we then should have realized that the Chinese did not share our values and were now the successor as our chief adversary. Instead we foolishly rushed headlong into a trade relationship with them which has not turned out well for us. And led to Trump among other things.
The approach to china brought the khmer rouge as a fringe benefit did it really make a different the vietnam war
How about the npa or the shining path
Peggy Noonan of the WSJ wrote a piece a few years back when she realized that many corporate executives were no longer US patriots. Global citizens, so to speak.
If they’re global citizens, they’re welcome to plant their tuchus in some other part of the globe. And travel with a Nansen passport.
Not too much to ask that our President not be bribed by foreigners, is it now?
Well, north of 40% of the population does not care. Our crippling problem is that Idiocracy is now.
Now we have a competitor/adversary that is much more formidable than the Soviets were, and it didn’t have to be that way.
China’s rapid economic development has been their own work. What we have contributed to the problem has been as follows:
1. Getting hopelessly in hock.
2. Being indulgent about China’s colonization of our supply chain.
3. Being otiose about Chinese espionage.
Some of the complacency has been due to China having been fairly benign prior to 2013.
I think of what was/is happening with China as a demonstration of the principle of “regression/reversion to the mean.” By that, I mean to say that throughout human history, dictatorships of one sort or another have been the rule, which includes monarchies as well as other more modern varieties, such as communism, fascism, totalitarian governments of all sorts. Civilizations that allow for democratic expression of opinion and some sort of self-rule have been rare as hen’s teeth, and usually doomed to flame out within a few generations. We here in the USA are a notable exception to the rule, but the rule remains firmly established. We have failed to guard our patrimony and to the contrary, have squandered it profligately. So there should be no surprise at why we became more like the Chinese rather than they becoming more like us. I hope we can at least slow the process down enough so as to keep from violently imploding, but every day brings another reason to doubt that this will be so.
Pompeo. Not so long ago I opined that my choice for 2024 was Pompeo or DeSantis; and I leaned toward Pompeo.
For now, it looks like it is DeSantis’ nomination to lose; and I am fine with that.
I do hope that post-24 Pompeo has an important foreign affairs/National Security role in the government. We need leaders like him dealing with the world at large.
China holds too many of our major corporations hostage now. It would be painful to try to cut off their tentacles; if we were ever to try.
As i recall nixon abided by salt which was a terrible deal he countered the soviets in chile
I didn’t like it in those days either. But on Nixon’s behalf, the kumbaya talk wasn’t the only reason. At the time, Russia was a bigger threat, and the opening did widen the rift between the two main Commie powers.
Could Have, Should Have. Hindsight is always right.
This topic seems like the flip-side of Google and possibly the Obama White House facilitating the Arab Spring uprising. The Android system and text and video messaging apps were integral to the information exchange and coordination among people in Egypt and elsewhere. Google execs. made hundreds of visits to the Obama White House, many during that time.
It’s the flip-side because Mubarak was a US ally & so had to be removed via power to the people efforts. With the events in China, Xi hates the US so Apple must neuter populist efforts.
Apple’s leadership have sold their souls to Mammon.
Klaus Schwab has stated publicly that he admires China, as has Trudeau. The new UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, when he was finance minister, called for a ‘nuanced strategy’ on China to balance human rights ‘concerns’ while expanding economic ties.
The current political leadership in the West is actively pursuing totalitarian policies and with massive support from big business.
Neo: “Remember the reassurances that China would become more like us as it industrialized and interacted more and more with the West? I don’t recall much if any discussion of the idea that the influence would be working the other way around, and that we’d become more and more like them. And yet that seems to be the case.”
This has been a flawed idea that somehow everyone in the world wants to be like us. As Steve points out most people don’t understand why the U.S is wealthy and free. Especially those who have no experience of our institutions and founding documents. And, increasingly, our poorly educated young adults are in this group.
Lots of people want to come here. They want to be wealthy. Few understand that freedom also requires responsibility. Free republics don’t just happen. They must be created and defended by their citizens.
We wrongly believed that the USSR and China would “evolve.” Instead, as Steve points out in his excellent comment, we are slowly sliding toward the old norm of authoritarianism.
If you look at the world today, name one country that is working toward becoming a democratic republic. I don’t see any.
I wanted to believe that we could navigate a world system with different political systems based on reciprocal and fair trade. It’s a win, win – right? The Cold War ended, right? Yet, we are in a new cold war because many nations do not accept the ideas we hold as worthy. In fact, they want to destroy them. Perilous times.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11487017/Bidens-Treasury-Secretary-Janet-Yellen-U-turns-says-Musks-Twitter-deal-investigated.html
Just as Covid has boomeranged on China, China is boomeranging on Apple.
Apple has repeatedly doubled-down on its China investments. Now those factories are becoming unreliable due to Zero Covid and a threat to Apple’s bottom line:
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The fragility of Apple’s approach to manufacturing didn’t matter until it suddenly did. China has taken extreme measures to keep COVID-19 under control, including harsh lockdowns. Factories can stay open under these lockdowns, but workers must live and work on-site.
Nearly three years into the pandemic, the Chinese government and Chinese factories are getting some real pushback on these measures. Some workers have reportedly fled Foxconn’s main factory, and the company has reportedly offered bonuses in an attempt to retain employees. Protests have at times turned violent.
Reuters revealed in late October that production of iPhones at Foxconn’s main plant could tumble by 30% due to the impact of harsh COVID-19 policies. On Monday, Bloomberg reported that Apple could fall short on production of its pricey iPhone Pro models by around 6 million units. That’s around $6 billion worth of iPhones.
The situation could get substantially worse if Foxconn can’t get its main plant running at full capacity soon. The Chinese government isn’t backing down on its COVID-19 policies, creating immense uncertainty for iPhone production in the coming weeks and months.
–“Apple’s Extreme Dependence on China Can No Longer Be Ignored”
https://www.fool.com/investing/2022/11/28/apples-extreme-dependence-on-china-can-no-longer-b/
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Many Western corporations are fleeing China for good reason. Apple is moving some of its iPhone production to India in the next few years. Nonetheless, Apple’s China-centric strategy looked brilliant until it didn’t.
Apple may be a big loser here.
Peter Zeihan’s overall take on China, aside from the demographic collapse, is that yes, indeed, Nixon’s opening to China paved the way for China to make its big pirate moves on Western economies.
However, what the US giveth, the US can taketh away.
According to Zeihan, we are in the latter phase and it’s going to be quite tough on China. Without the US maintaining open sea lanes, Chinese factories and free tech, China is in big trouble.
For impure and imperfect reasons, Dems and Reps are both pulling back on China.
China is in big trouble.
“ China’s rapid economic development has been their own work.” Not quite Art, prior to 1,2 &3 there is the most important factor that need to be added; the wholesale transfer of know how to China. Take a look at Henry Paulson’s book Dealing With China. “An insider unmasks the new economic superpower. Hank Paulson has dealt with China unlike any other foreigner. As head of Goldman Sachs, Paulson had a pivotal role in opening up China to private enterprise.” He certainly did that. Problem was, private enterprise had no future when faced with CCP muscle. He should have known better. It is disturbing to read how he is so proud to facilitate China’s world dominance Every. Step. Of. The. Way.
Oldflyer, I admire Pompeo also:
“I tell the story often — I get asked, ‘Who’s the most dangerous person in the world? Is it Chairman Kim, is it Xi Jinping?’ The most dangerous person in the world is Randi Weingarten.”
Weingarten has served as the president of the American Federation of Teachers for the past 15 years.
Brilliant.
But, giving credit where credit is due, her copious asininity and earnest grotesqueness helped Youngkin win in Virginia in the last election.
(For which, many thanks are due—as well as to Terry McAauliffe, the genius who invited her to stump for him…)
“However, what the US giveth, the US can taketh away.”
Not sure I agree with that, since one of the reasons Trump HAD TO BE STOPPED was his perceived hard stance against China.
I think it’s more a case of…they can steal the technology and they can build on it and develop around it…BUT—and this is the HUGE “BUT”—their CULTURE (more correctly, political culture) of distrust, coercion, intimidation and FEAR—not historically unjustified, mind you—is at some point going to bite them in the butt.
IOW, they have that built-in failure factor. (Disclosure: I suppose we all do, at least to some extent—though there are exceptions, certainly.) It’s BAKED into their political culture and ultimately MUST emerge.
We may have reached that moment.
(This is not to say they can’t achieve great things. They obviously can. And they most certainly have. BUT THEY CANNOT SUSTAIN IT…though, once again, this is an “issue” that characterizes most, if not all, cultures…in the “long run”…)
The West, generally, has achieved what it has BECAUSE OF its culture of promoting and valuing TRUST (all things being relative). Of HONESTY…or make that “RELATIVE HONESTY”. (Or, at least, it’s a VALUE that the Judeo-Christian ethic strives for…though things do evolve, alas…)
“Curious” indeedy that “Biden” and “his” ilk seem to believe/feel/require that the US, and the West, generally, must emulate China (and others) in the LET’S TRASH TRUST department…while promoting threats, intimidation, lawlessness and SHEER, UTTER DISHONESTY…”throughout the land”….
(But no doubt for the best, most virtuous of reasons…)
Not quite Art, prior to 1,2 &3 there is the most important factor that need to be added; the wholesale transfer of know how to China.
Do you fancy the ‘know how’ is unavailable in Latin America?
I am well past old enough to remember Apple’s early days and their “1984” Super Bowl commericial (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VtvjbmoDx-I) which was based on George Orwell’s book “1984”. Amazing how far a once great American company has fallen to be a toady to the ChiComs and they are only one of many to have done so.
Because the monolith then was IBM pillsburys 100 year mace seems persuasive we havent yet had a taiping rebellion although 2020 was a close run thing
Allied,
.
The Apple II computer was really quite wonderful. I even wrote some machine level code for some graphics and I just had a working knowledge of BASIC but was able to quickly learn the Apple code. Then along came Mac as Apple’s response to HP and IBM Microsoft based machines. The great advancement was their introduction of GUI which really cemented their market share. What made me turn against Apple at that point was how they decided the user no longer should have access to basic functions….the attitude of “we know better” was so obvious. Their totalitarian attitude was starting to slip out, and has “progressed” ever since.
The now Apple/Android split is a great analog for the general society split.
This guy has a farily charitable take on Apple’s China problems.
All fine and dandy…but one MIGHT want to take into account that the Semafor “news” org. is one of SBF’s pet charities….
(A “mere” factoid that came to light recently when Semafor tried to slander Musk over his supposed “negotiations” with SBF…in the matter of the twitter purchase and financing…IIRC)
I see a couple of people have mentioned it already but I will add my vote that you’re implicating Nixon in a situation he did not create. Decoupling China from the (as it then existed) USSR was exactly the right move to make at that point in the Cold War. Remember that we were doing cultural exchanges and trade with the Soviet Union itself as well but these were almost always one-off deals and special exchanges that aimed to reduce tensions between our countries, not to somehow ‘democratize’ them. The claim that we could get China, along with similar later claims about Russia, to become more like the West through trade was a feature of the argument over including China in what had previously been exclusively pro-US/Western institutions like the WTO that occurred decades after Nixon opened up to China. I’m sure you can find people who objected to Nixon’s moves but I think the argument was far more over the strategic implications of trading and less about the expectation that China would become a democracy.
Nixon’s assumption was that the USSR would always remain a strong opponent of the US. His successors assumed that the US would always be the only superpower and could offshore production to other countries without losing ground economically. They both assumed that China would lag behind the West.
Other than give some guns to the muj how did china cripple The soviet union?
More on Apple’s China problem:
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Of all the conversations I’ve had this week with senior people who were once in charge of building Apple products in China, one comment stuck out: China is “not just a location. It was also an era.”
Note the past tense.
Worker protests in Zhengzhou have significantly disrupted the supply of iPhones and will cost Apple billions of dollars in holiday sales, according to analysts and news reports.
Obviously, the technology manufacturing ecosystem in China isn’t about to disappear. But the people who built their careers and fortunes relying on China’s emergence as a production powerhouse have come to accept that the system they built is now in decline.
The current videos of unrest — which include young workers scaling fences to escape “iPhone city,” where they were locked in during a COVID-19 outbreak — are becoming indelible images.
Nobody could have predicted Covid and the ripple effects that led to the current protests. But China’s global ambitions, which include possibly acting on its claims to Taiwan, have long been a risk factor for companies dependent on manufacturing there.
–“Apple’s Chinese dream is over”
https://www.semafor.com/article/11/30/2022/apples-chinese-dream-is-over
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Yes, I am aware SBF was one of Semafor’s early investors. It does not necessarily follow that everything Semafor writes must be wrong.