Apple in China
The Capture of the World's Greatest Company
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4.7 • 14 Ratings
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- $1.99
Publisher Description
“Phenomenal…a jaw-dropping book.” —Jon Stewart, The Daily Show
Named by The New York Times, The New Yorker, and Prospect magazine as a best book of the year, this “scrupulously reported” (The New Yorker) and “astonishing” (The Daily Telegraph, London) book rivets with its portrayal of how Apple allowed itself to become dependent on China for a huge percentage of its manufacturing, making it vulnerable and unwittingly laying the groundwork for the Asian superpower to rival the US in technological expertise.
After struggling to build products on three continents, Apple turned to China’s seemingly endless supply of cheap labor. It soon deployed thousands of engineers, trained millions of workers, and invested hundreds of billions of dollars to create the most advanced global supply chain. These efforts fueled the iPhone’s dominance—but also laid the foundation for a powerful, state-supported Chinese electronics industry. What began as a business decision evolved into a cautionary tale of global trade, tech rivalry, and national security.
Without intending to, Apple helped Beijing acquire technological influence that could now be weaponized—a central concern in the ongoing US-China tech war. Drawing on over two hundred interviews, Patrick McGee exposes never-before-reported details from Silicon Valley to Shenzhen: internal emails, secretive executive meetings, and overlooked voices inside the company’s China operations.
You’ll meet the “Gang of Eight” executives tasked with appeasing Beijing, a Mormon missionary who launched Apple retail in China, and a veteran whose dreams of improving factory conditions were crushed by both Apple’s demands and Xi Jinping’s authoritarian crackdown. From Foxconn and Tim Cook to the Chinese Communist Party and Taiwan Semiconductor, this is a revelatory look at how Apple, in seeking efficiency, became entangled in the very politics it once claimed to challenge.
For readers of Chip War, American Factory, and The Big Short, Apple in China is a searing examination of corporate power, Chinese nationalism, deglobalization, and the fragile relationship between Silicon Valley and the world’s rising superpower.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
The computer maker that once dominated China's development into an industrial powerhouse is now dominated by China's government, according to this insightful debut account. Financial Times reporter McGee recaps Apple's 30-year process of shuttering its original American factories and outsourcing production to Chinese contract manufacturers. It's partly a saga of greed as Apple took advantage of Asia's lax regulations and its own bargaining power—Apple forced one firm to sign a production contract without reading it—to ruthlessly cut costs. But Apple also invested hundreds of billions of dollars in its Chinese suppliers, taught them state-of-the-art techniques, and brought them its own engineers and high-tech machinery. Apple eventually located most of its production in China, which, McGee contends, made it hostage to Beijing's whims. The company appreciated the government's policy of crushing labor unions and muting bad press but had to bow to demands to compromise customers' data privacy and accommodate censorship. McGee's perceptive account presents a cogent rethink of Apple's role in the global economy, painting the company as the de facto proprietor and active manager of China's advanced electronics sector. He also makes the potentially dry subject of global supply chains riveting, with epic narratives of bleeding-edge product design and colorful portraits of larger-than-life leaders. The result is a fascinating analysis of how global capitalism conquered China—and vice versa.
Customer Reviews
Compelling Cronicle of Apple
First rate research of Apple operations around the world. The story of technology transfer from around the world to Apple to China’s vast design and manufacturing industries is fascinating and it is risky. Hard to stop by reading this book.
Excellent Review of China’s Rise in Manufacturing and R&D
This book is as much about how the Chinese economy has developed, with the strident (and often poorly documented) support of Apple, as well as the broader implications this has for the future of advanced industrial production. Apple did not set out, per se, to establish this present state but is notably implicated in its development.
I’d highly recommend this book for its original journalism, clear and direct prose and entertaining storytelling, and blunt documentation of Apple’s longstanding involvement,ent in China. By the end you’ll know more about Apple and, more importantly, be better situated to interpret some actions and decisions made by the PRC and their broader implications.