
China Said to Exclude Apple From Procurement List - wfjackson
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-08-06/china-said-to-exclude-apple-from-procurement-list.html
======
xkiwi
#1>Obama bans wind-farm purchases by Chinese company
[http://money.cnn.com/2012/09/28/news/economy/obama-china-
win...](http://money.cnn.com/2012/09/28/news/economy/obama-china-wind-farm/)

#2>Huawei, ZTE Banned From Selling to U.S. Government
[http://techonomy.com/2013/04/huawei-zte-banned-from-
selling-...](http://techonomy.com/2013/04/huawei-zte-banned-from-selling-to-u-
s-government/)

#3>Obama Imposes Tariffs On Chinese Tires
[http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/09/11/obama-imposes-
tarif...](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/09/11/obama-imposes-tariffs-on-
_n_284271.html)

#4>Chinese exclusion policy of NASA
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_exclusion_policy_of_NAS...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_exclusion_policy_of_NASA)

#5>Obama BANS U.S. government from buying Chinese-made computer technology
over cyber-attack fears
[http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2300518/Obama-
BANS-U...](http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2300518/Obama-BANS-U-S-
government-buying-Chinese-technology-cyber-attack-fears.html)

What was the news again?

~~~
matthewmacleod
The news is that China is imposing additional import restrictions on US
technology.

The fact that the US also does this – something we're all aware of – doesn't
change the fact that this is interesting news!

------
taylodl
A country the size of China with the technical expertise available to them can
create an open stack that they can manage and control. They already have
several hardware manufacturers in their territory to make any hardware they
may need. I honestly don't see why they would ever have been buying Apple and
Microsoft products in the first place, and I'm an American.

~~~
huuu
Because not so long ago the Chinese hardware sucked big time. I'm talking
about 5 years back or so.

They made huge improvements (Huawei, Meizu, Xiaomi, others) and are going to
outsell brands like Apple and Samsung.

~~~
s_q_b
>They made huge improvements (Huawei, Meizu, Xiaomi, others)...

Agreed, and we can only expect more improvement as China moves up the value
chain.

>and are going to outsell brands like Apple and Samsung

 _In China_ , sure. I think Xiaomi is neck-and-neck with Samsung right now.
But it will take a bit longer in the rest of the world for those firms to
compete elsewhere. I expect an integration of product mix, with China joining
the club of developed nations, rather than a takeover of manufacturing by
Chinese producers.

Chinese brands are in the position of Japanese brands in the late 70s, trying
to shed a reputation for making "cheap knock-offs," even when those knock-offs
were better than the originals.

The path to fast growth in Asia seems to be: industrialize, specialize in
cheap products, move into massed-produced consumer goods, improve quality by
copying foreign competitors, then use your new engineering knowledge earned by
cloning competitors' products to leapfrog the competition.

Japan did it to us, Korea did it to Japan, and now China will most likely be
next.

And don't think the United States didn't do it ourselves. Heck, we invented
the model during the industrial revolution when we leapfrogged Europe using
plenty of "borrowed" ideas.

The upshot though is that economic growth is mostly a universal good these
days. Certainly both the United States and Japan are better off than they
would have been if Japan never caught up with us. We should be celebrating the
rise of China's people, not fearing it.

And while their government may be antagonistic and repressive, it is leaps and
bounds better than it was a few decades ago. If one were to construct a
Maslow's hierarchy of needs for the Four Freedoms, Freedom from Want would be
at its base. Further progress seems likely.

The vector is pointed in the right direction for everyone involved. All we
have to do is not screw up the course.

------
drderidder
Not too surprising. I'd expect the fallout and economic impact of mass
surveillance to unfold over several years, with a gradual move away from US-
based technology companies, including SaaS & PaaS, in favour of open source
software and self-hosted solutions.

~~~
pkorzeniewski
I wonder if there will be a comeback of self-hosted software in the near
future just for the security and surveillance reasons, especially in business
environment. There was the whole Cloud craze not so long ago, where many
companies were pushing all their data outside local infrastructure, but I
wonder if this is a good move in the long-term. SaaS has many advantages over
"classic" solutions, but security and reliability was always a weak point and
it may be a major factor against it in the future.

------
s_q_b
More protectionism is not the answer. Restraints on global trade are probably
the most harmful thing we do to ourselves as a species.

Now I understand that national defense is paramount. Some restrictions for
national defense may be necessary (and neither China nor the US has helped
promote trust in each other's products for defense uses lately), but trade
restrictions should only be used as a last resort.

We often forget that we have been down this road before. The world on the eve
of World War I looked far more like the world of today than the world of our
parents.

The entire globe was experiencing massively interconnected rapid economic
growth, not just from industrialization, but from the speed and ease of global
trade which the new technologies enabled. American ice was sold in India,
India tea in Russia, German farm implements in Britain, and British everything
everywhere.

Then came first the Great War, and then the Great Depression. And with the
Depression came every politician's favorite way to fight economic woes: keep
out the foreigners. One restraint led to immediate retaliation by other
nations, creating a frenetic negative feedback loop, until finally the open
system collapsed in its entirety.

And in its place we created a hidebound monstrosity, an incomprehensible
series of trade regulations that were nearly impossible to navigate.

Of course this protectionism only drove us deeper into the Depression, caused
global output to plummet to historic lows, made the global economic engine
seize like an un-oiled V8, and threw lit thermite into the already smoldering
tinderbox of militant nationalism.

It took two World Wars, a global standoff that threatened to consume all of
civilization in nuclear holocaust, and most of a century to get back to where
we started. Let's not throw away those hard-won gains over international
intrigue. Trillions of dollars, and the lives they support, are at stake here.

Free trade is good. Full stop. It builds massive wealth through compounding
growth. It pulls people out of dire poverty. And it stops wars.

To step away from it now, just as we enter a truly globalized world, would be
the single largest self-inflicted wound to the global economy since the
collapse of Rome.

~~~
notasmartman
Lets not kid ourselves, security isn't the impetus behind this. It's politics.
And politics is just grown men acting like children, while pretending that
they're looking out for our best interest, all the while screwing us more than
the people they are protecting us from.

~~~
nwatson
This is won't stop corrupt Chinese officials with money to burn, and also will
play out just like the BYOD scenario for mobile phones in corporations in the
US:

BYOD phenomenon:

    
    
      * company issues BlackBerry or Windows 6.x phones
      * executive has money to burn, likes the iPhone/iPad
      * executive brings iPhone/iPad to work and tells I.T. guy "hook me up or you're fired"
      * I.T. makes an exception, deals with it
      * other people start bringing their iPhone/iPad to work
      * corporate policy adjusts and everybody can bring iOS/Android, corporate issues iOS/Android
      * players like Citrix, MobileIron, etc., have a market for Mobile Device Management
    

Chinese gov't evolution:

    
    
      * corrupt official has money to burn
      * corrupt official buys MacBook/iOS/iPad or Samsung, etc.
      * corrupt official uses his stuff at work despite policy
      * underlings want to show off too and bring their devices
      * Hmmm, except the US gov't still depends on BlackBerry, at least DHS

------
quackerhacker
This isn't surprising at all considering our government seeked to block Huawei
routers from being used in telecom infrastructure back in 2012 [1], over some
of the same national security concerns.

[1] [http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/10/08/us-usa-china-
huawe...](http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/10/08/us-usa-china-huawei-zte-
idUSBRE8960NH20121008)

~~~
tomp
The difference being, of course, that US can in no way block the use of
Chinese equipment, given that most of the hardware is actually manufactured in
China (or neighboring countries).

------
Glide
Can anyone chime in and help the rest of us understand the relationship
between business and government in China?

I can't help but think this is more of a move to help China's internal
industries, but it's hard to say without understanding the political climate.

~~~
threeseed
It's not dissimilar to every country really. Critical or large businesses e.g.
energy, telecommunications always have an unusually close and unfettered
relationship with government. In China it would likely be closer similar to
say Russia.

Australia recently banned the use of Chinese equipment from our national
broadband rollout for national security reasons so this isn't an unprecedented
move.

~~~
RockyMcNuts
Well, top government officials have big ownership interests in national
champions; companies have party secretaries on site who can pull rank on
management; trying to compete against companies with ties to government is
generally going to be quite difficult...not exactly like every country.

The iPhone is a luxury product in big demand, and being out of favor with the
government will make it in even greater demand. The people targeted by Apple
like their bling, people buy the foreign product because it's higher status
and more trusted than the local product; in fact they'll go to Hong Kong to
buy foreign products because they're afraid the one they buy locally will be
counterfeit or crappy localized version. People trust Apple more than they
trust the government or the Xiaomi knockoff.

------
_djo_
I wonder if this isn't also an attempt to force Apple to give China access to
the iOS and OS X source code.

Similar tactics were used in the past to force Microsoft to give the Chinese
government access to Windows source code through the China Information
Technology Security Certification Center (CNITSEC) Source Code Review Lab.

The US government has accused China of abusing CNITSEC's access to Windows to
develop zero-day exploits for offensive use, so if that's true there's an
ulterior motive there as well.

That's over and above the article's claim that the Chinese government wants to
reduce the number of American tech firms' products in official Chinese
government use.

~~~
iqihs
Not very familiar with OS programming, but what's stopping them from accessing
the source code right now?

~~~
smoorman1024
The iOS/OSX source code is proprietary to Apple. You wouldn't be able to see
it unless you worked at Apple and had proper access.

------
cbhl
I wonder what operating system they'll use on their desktop devices. Both
Apple and Microsoft are excluded from the list. Does that mean everyone will
be using Linux?

------
jasonjei
I wonder what operating system they'll use on their mobile devices. Can't use
Android--made in the USA.

~~~
jonathansizz
They can use a fork of AOSP, with all Google code removed. Which is what
several large Chinese hardware companies are already doing.

------
venomsnake
Not unexpected. Apple have more control over unrooted iphone (or even rooted)
than the owner.

~~~
threeseed
And how is that different from every piece of electronic equipment ever made ?

The creators of the OS always have more control over how the phone works than
the owner. iOS is more locked down than Android (no access to root FS) but I
would argue that 99% of users don't know the difference and just blindly
install software from third parties.

~~~
lmm
99% of users? Maybe. But government employees with employer-provided devices
often find those devices a bit locked-down by their employer.

