
Apple Services Shut Down in China in Startling About-Face - jboydyhacker
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/22/technology/apple-no-longer-immune-to-chinas-scrutiny-of-us-tech-firms.html
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3pt14159
China has to play fairly carefully with Apple. On the one hand it's an
American company that puts microphones and cameras into the cafes, offices,
and bedrooms of many of their citizenry; but on the other hand, with
decreasing competitiveness due to rising wages there isn't anything
specifically _stopping_ Apple or other American tech companies from moving
manufacturing out of China. Foxconn alone employs about 4.3 million people,
and while it would be very difficult to move operations to Tiawan, Singapore,
Japan, or even the United States; it would also provide a number of benefits
since any new hosting country would very incentivized to make the move happen.

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educar
You make it sound like Apple can easily move out of China. Think again.
Apple's profits are largely due to the cheap labor market (just like many
other companies)

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toomuchtodo
> Apple's profits are largely due to the cheap labor market (just like many
> other companies)

Foxconn is replacing millions of workers in China with robotics. Couldn't
Apple acquire these same robotics, perform their own manufacturing in the US
(remember, substantial tax breaks in the US for equipment purchases!), and
then lease out any spare capacity.

Seems its all coming back to US shores. As a US citizen, I don't mind.

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soperj
Not really since all the components that actually make the phone are also made
in China.

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soperj
Won't let me reply to you, but really if you're making it in the US, Japan,
Korea, Taiwan are the same thing as China.

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maaku
>., Japan, Korea, Taiwan are the same thing as China.

Hahahaha nope.

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soperj
Great contribution. You must feel pretty good about yourself.

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bjshepard
A key sentence from the BBC article on the topic: " The strict rules are also
seen as a way to foster the success of indigenous net Chinese firms such as
Huawei, Alibaba and Tencent."

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lukasb
as if Tencent needs the help!

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codecamper
I think as the technical part of the population, we have the opportunity now
to greatly change the structure of the world.

Government can be largely replaced by software. (just thinking long term here)

Democracy can be more pure. Corruption can be controlled. Economies can be
stabilized and better planned. Environmental resources can be better managed.

We've got a lot more work to do past sharing images & allowing chats (though
look at the massive affect of just those things)

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inimino
Which functions of government can be replaced by software specifically? Making
laws? Interpreting them? Diplomacy??

I think as the technical part of the population we tend to be overoptimistic
about technical solutions, which then get steamrolled by the real world's
existing power structures.

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sievebrain
One obvious one is the gathering of feedback and debate about decisions.
Governments barely encourage that today, except when they have dumb petition
sites and the like, but there's no real reason why they couldn't.

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bickfordb
I'm curious how China is able to do this and belong to the WTO?

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xigency
It shouldn't be too surprising with China's history of censorship that they
would ban iTunes from selling books and movies to their citizens. What's
surprising is that they apparently allowed it for several months.

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tekklloneer
It would be very likely that Apple was following by "the rules".

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xigency
How could they? The communist party would have to literally read every book
and watch every movie for approval, so to really go by the rules, the only
content they could offer is media in favor of the cultural revolution. I doubt
Apple even tried to play it like that, so why be surprised when it's shut
down?

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frankchn
There are bookstores (both online and brick-and-mortar) with a large number of
books approved for sale in China, so if Apple stuck to selling those books, it
would not be a censorship issue.

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xigency
Fair enough.

Apple needed to put more thought and effort into their launch if they were
considering becoming a mainstay in a completely different political/cultural
market.

Others have pointed out that China's closure to outside (software) tech. has
helped them as an incubator, but really I think American companies have failed
to bend their policies to the degree necessary to continue to exist (in
China). Google for a while has tried to resist censorship, but it's really a
question of whether a company wants the one billion Chinese citizens to have
access to their products at all, or if they would like to be shutout.

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coldcode
Apparently there was a movie that China didn't approve available on iTunes
that might have triggered the stoppage.

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williwu
It's the Ten Years movie

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studentrob
> Last week, Apple’s iBooks Store and iTunes Movies were shut down in China,
> just six months after they were started there... then a regulator, the State
> Administration of Press, Publication, Radio, Film and Television, asserted
> its authority and demanded the closings

Unsurprising. China has a habit of allowing foreign services to operate for a
bit. Then they come out with their own version.

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bnolsen
and this is a reason why china with the current government can never truly be
a world leader in anything: Your entire enterprise can be distroyed at the
whim of a few unrestrained individuals. Sort of like apple's app store, but at
a much bigger level.

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_nedR
Being from india, i have come to the opposite conclusion.

Chinese protectionism (aided by the language barrier) has served chinese
entrepreneurs quite well.

They have their own google. Their own fb. Their own twitter. Basically all
services that India doesnt have. The list goes on. These services may or may
not be inferior to the original but from an economic standpoint, its good
since the money and data flows within the economy instead of going abroad.

India has its own taxi service but they are getting severe competition from
uber (with rumours floating of a possible buyout by uber). We have flipkart
but they are getting pummelled by amazon (which just walked in late to the
indian ecommerce market after flipkart laid all the groundwork) and was
recently down-valued by investors.

China is also successfully exporting to india- chinese smartphones are doing
very well, much better than Apple.

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sievebrain
Served Chinese entrepreneurs but that isn't the same thing as served the
Chinese people.

For instance, at the time when Google was kicked out of China essentially
leaving their market a Baidu monopoly, Baidu lacked many useful features of
Google especially if you wanted to search for non-Chinese websites (e.g. if
you were a scientist wanting to do international research). The PRC didn't
care. Having a pliable and controlled 'captain of industry' in the form of the
Baidu founder was a more important goal to them, than the convenience of their
own people.

Repeat that story a million times and you have an economy that looks
superficially strong but makes its people miserable .... oh wait no it
doesn't, because the censorship and language barriers ensure most people have
no idea what they're missing out on.

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skc
You're being quite presumptuous in assuming the Chinese people served by local
firms are miserable or worse off than their Western counterparts.

Not everything has to be seen through Western colored goggles. There is
something quite admirable to me about China forcefully wanting their own local
products front and center and frankly it's worked out well for their economy
all things considered.

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sievebrain
By definition, if protectionism is needed, then the locals preferred the
foreign made products.

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vadym909
I can't imagine ibooks and imovies was making in money in China given how easy
it is to get content without paying. Apple's probably OK with just the
hardware profits from iphones. Developing countries aren't great markets for
IP/copyrighted products.

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xbmcuser
Will they put the same restrictions on Ios apps. No one has been able to make
Apple open its hardware to non appstore apps. Would be interesting if in the
future they ask for that as well.

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Spooky23
This almost certainly a consequence of pissing off the USG.

It's a pretty rare event to create a situation where the interests of the PRC
are directly aligned with the US government's interests.

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rospaya
Are you referring to the FBI decrypting situation? If so, I very much doubt
that decrypting phones is even remotely important as billions in taxes.

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sachinag
There's a huge difference between iCloud not working and the content sale
restrictions that this is. This is irritating but not key for Apple - but if
iCloud and activation for iPhones and iPads stopped working, that would really
be a big deal.

China doesn't want to be a dumping ground for western media, and they're
rightfully concerned about not being able to build a content export industry.

