A clear-eyed look at Apple and China
There’s reason to believe that Apple made a change to the way that AirDrop works at the behest of the Chinese government. Let’s take a deep breath and really think through the situation.
You’re no doubt aware that the Chinese government has been engaging in extremely harsh COVID lockdowns, and protests have erupted among Chinese citizens in response. To the surprise of no one, the oppressive Chinese regime has moved to squelch these protests. In the midst of this, attention has turned to a change that Apple made in iOS 16.1.1 nearly a month ago. It didn’t get a lot of attention at the time, but now it’s embroiled Apple in criticism and charges of “doing the bidding of the CCP.” I think a lot of clear thinking has been lost in the rush to account for what’s happening, and I want to really dive in to the issue.
First of all, the change. If you’re in any country other than China, if you go to Settings > General > AirDrop on your iPhone you have three options: Receiving Off, Contacts Only, Everyone. AirDrop lets you do peer-to-peer file sharing. If you have AirDrop set to Everyone, any nearby iPhone user can send a file from their iPhone to yours. You can choose to reject the file, but you’ll be visible as a file share destination to every iPhone around you. As of early November, if you’re in China the option is no longer “Everyone,” but “Everyone for 10 minutes.” That means that after ten minutes of being visible to every iPhone near you, the setting reverts to “Contacts Only.” Presumably you could then go back into Settings and enable Everyone for 10 minutes again, but it requires a lot more manual management than the previous setting.
Why would Apple make this change? On November 9th, TechCrunch reported the following: “Apple says it is improving the AirDrop experience by automatically reverting the receiving setting back to “Contacts Only” after 10 minutes to help mitigate unwanted file sharing.” And, “Apple says it plans to bring this capability to users globally in the coming year.” That would imply that Apple does indeed think this is a good setting change for user security, and it’s not at all hard to see that perspective. A less savvy iPhone user might enable the “Everyone” setting, not knowing what they’re really doing, and receive unwanted file shares in perpetuity. Personally I prefer to retain the option for everyone all the time, but I certainly see the argument for the ten minute limit.
Ok, but why did it roll out only in China thus far? Apple hasn’t said, but everyone is speculating that the Chinese Communist Party requested that Apple make the change, and that strikes me as a very reasonable assumption. The reason it’s catching so much attention now when it didn’t a month ago is that protesters now are allegedly using AirDrop to disseminate information the CCP objects to during protests to other iPhone users participating in the protests. The new AirDrop setting wouldn’t prevent that, but it would make it a lot tougher.
So let’s say that, as assumed, the CCP demanded that Apple make this change in order to hamper protesters. If that’s the case, I don’t like it, you don’t like it, and I guarantee that Apple doesn’t like it. And it wouldn’t be the first time that the CCP has made demands of Apple. In the past they’ve asked Apple to remove certain apps from the App Store in China, and even demanded that Apple remove the Taiwan flag emoji from Chinese iPhones. All of this is bad, and we’re rightly angry that it’s happening. This has led many to say that Apple is “doing the CCP’s bidding,” with the underlying meaning being, “Apple is the CCP’s puppet.” But is that a fair assessment?
Look, we’d all love for Apple to tell Xi to pound sand. But what would be the result of that action? It could mean that Apple is barred from doing business in China. Ok, some might say, why not just go ahead and leave? If Apple left China, either voluntarily or by force, it would be losing billions of dollars per year in revenue. It wold also lose its single largest manufacturing base. Although Apple has been working to manufacture its products in more countries over the last few years, it’s still heavily dependent on Chinese manufacturing. Were Apple to leave China abruptly, it would take an investment of billions of dollars and a lot of time to replace lost Chinese manufacturing capacity elsewhere. Apple’s stock price would tank, and Apple’s CEO and board would likely lose their jobs. It’s easy for you and I to tell Apple to take a tough stand against CCP dictates because we’re not responsible for the outcome.
I also think it would be worse for the Chinese people on the whole if Apple were to leave China. Yes, the CCP demanding Apple take steps that makes it more difficult for protestors to organize is really bad. That’s a crime against humanity on the Chinese State’s part. But on net I think it’s been very good for China to have Western companies doing business in China. Western companies pulling out of China would weaken relations between the U.S. and China and turn China into a giant North Korea. That’s not good for anyone. Remember too that Apple is one of many U.S. companies that does business in China and relies on Chinese manufacturing. Many of these other companies have no doubt had to bow to CCP demands on a number of issues. But they don’t get the attention Apple does because Apple is the richest company in the world.
I don’t have easy answers. I certainly wouldn’t want to be in Apple’s position. What the CCP is doing is absolutely evil, and I hate that they’re making demands like this of Apple. But my question to everyone right now is, what is Apple’s realistic alternative to refusing demands like these? I actually do think the CCP could make a demand of Apple that Apple would not comply with. For example, I think if China demanded a backdoor into iOS Apple would refuse and bear the consequences. But right now they’re in a very unpleasant situation that isn’t as cut and dry as many pundits and politicians are making it out to be.
A clear-eyed look at Apple and China
Im no expert on the subject but I think that you are mistaken in thinking apple would be worse off. Hollywood showed this year with Top Gun that you can sell a hugely successful movie while getting 0 support from China. The same I think is true in other markets. Everyone is so afraid of losing the business but no one seems to be asking what are we losing by staying (other than the moral high ground).
To that point perhaps there are financial reasons apple and frankly the whole world should cut off china until the government is replaced. I think the answer is yes. I have worked for a few companies that did manufacturing in China and it always blew my mind how much money we lose trying to save a few bucks.
Were the parts cheeper, yes. But they were worse, WAY worse. Quality was out the door and so right away the cost goes up a little. Then there were logistical issues. China was fumbling this long before COVID and we often had unplanned shortages. Sometimes due to poor quality parts, sometimes due to crappy shipping or communication of the part of the vendors, and often due to holidays (that were always as we would find out a cover for worker unrest). So the price of the good goes up again. Then there is the outright theft of intellectual property. We had to get parts made be different vendors so they would not know what we were making. We had sometimes parts only half made ten shipped somewhere else to be finished. Still we had a huge problem with our ideas being copied and sometimes we would see Chinese competition produce OUR new designs before we would even get ours.
All of this adds cost to doing business there and it blew my mind that no one at our company was taking a look at these in total to decide where we should get parts. The only discussion was about price. No one would even consider that leaving china would not only be a morally correct choice but likely a financial one too. The more companies wake up to this and move manufacturing elsewhere the cheeper that manufacturing will get too.
American manufacturing my be expensive but you get a better quality product, do not have to worry about logistics, do not have to worry about intellectual theft AND the more that we use it the cheeper it will get. Some of why it is so expensive is there is no need for it so there is no market. Supply and demand. Sure demand is low but supply is non existent.
We are at an important time, college enrollment is down with men. Now is the perfect time to promote and build out the great American manufacturing industry that got us here today. Companies and consumers will be better off financially and morally. So to will the Chinese people be better off because this may give them the push they need to free themselves from the slavery they have endured for the last 100 years.