News Analysis
Apple’s CEO Tim Cook, according to secret documents reportedly seen by Information, inked a $275 billion giveaway in 2016 that explains the tech company’s success in China.
Chinese market is no small part of Apple’s current approximately $3 trillion market capitalization. This makes it the world’s biggest company. So the Apple CEO could be incentivized to give away its technology and ignore human rights abuse to maximize his bonuses in the short term while not only selling out Apple shareholders, but American democracy to boot.
What did Apple give away to maintain its access to the Chinese market back in 2016, after Chinese authorities were angry about Apple not doing enough for China’s economy and shutting “down iTunes books and movies in April 2016,” according to the report’s source?
To sweeten negotiations, the Apple CEO apparently agreed to a $1 billion investment in Didi Global, Uber’s Chinese competitor, at a critical time in the two companies’ fight for ride hailing market share in China.
A few days later, Apple agreed to spend $275 billion in China over five years, including on what should be considered forced technology development and transfer.
According to Information’s Wayne Ma, the deal “committed Apple to aiding roughly a dozen causes favored by China,” including “a pledge to help Chinese manufacturers develop ‘the most advanced manufacturing technologies’ and ‘support the training of high-quality Chinese talents.’”
secret agreement with Beijing promised that Apple would “use more components from Chinese suppliers in its devices, sign deals with Chinese software firms, collaborate on technology with Chinese universities and directly invest in Chinese tech companies,” according to Ma.
“Apple promised to invest ‘many billions of dollars more’ than what the company was already spending annually in China. Some of that money would go toward building new retail stores, research and development centers and renewable energy projects.”
Meanwhile, Apple is among other major American corporations—including Nike and Coca-Cola—lobbying Congress against the core provisions in a bill that just passed the House against the use of Uyghur forced labor in China. provisions reasonably assume, because of China’s opaque labor standards and the lack of a free press, that goods made in Xinjiang are produced with forced labor except where companies prove otherwise. Much of the world’s cotton and polysilicon, used in Apple products, comes from Xinjiang.
Uyghurs from the Xinjiang region, as well as Tibetans and Falun Gong, are undergoing genocide in China, according to the definition in the U.N. Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. Uyghur genocide has been recognized by the American, UK, Canadian, and several European government entities. Part of this genocide is forced labor, which Apple apparently doesn’t care much about relative to its China-linked revenues.
One of Apple’s Xinjiang-related lobbying firms, led by former staffers of Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), whose family has business interests in China, is called “Fierce Government Relations.”
fierceness is coming from the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), not the other way around. According to the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI) in 2020, Apple is an apparent beneficiary of Xinjiang’s forced labor transfer programs through Apple suppliers O-Film Technology and Foxconn.
“Under conditions that strongly suggest forced labour, Uyghurs are working in factories that are in the supply chains of at least 82 well-known global brands in the technology, clothing and automotive sectors, including Apple, BMW, Gap, Huawei, Nike, Samsung, Sony and Volkswagen,” according to the authors, Vicky Xiuzhong Xu, Danielle Cave, James Leibold, Kelsey Munro, and Nathan Ruser.
report states that O-Film technology accepts what appears to be forced Uyghur laborers. Yet, Apple was supplied by O-Film, Cook visited it, and he promoted it on social media and through an Apple press release that was later deleted.
“Prior to Cook’s visit,” according to ASPI, “between 28 April and 1 May 2017, 700 Uyghurs were reportedly transferred from Lop county, Hotan Prefecture, in Xinjiang to work at a separate O-Film factory in Nanchang, Jiangxi province.”
A local Xinjiang paper said that workers at O-Film had minders from Lop county who were “politically reliable.” workers “were expected to ‘gradually alter their ideology’ and turn into ‘modern, capable youth’ who ‘understand the Party’s blessing, feel gratitude toward the Party, and contribute to stability,’” according to the report.
That sounds like forced labor.
It’s time for American corporations, including Apple, to improve their ethical practices. y should not be involved with any country, government, or political party that is committing even a single genocide, much less three. China is that country. Beijing is that government. CCP is that party. End American complicity with forced labor and genocide now.
Views expressed in this article are the opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of Pezou.
Pezou : Apple Gives $275 Billion to China