
Apple CEO becomes chairman of China university board - swat535
https://www.taiwannews.com.tw/en/news/3800247
======
bigpumpkin
A selection of other members of this university board:

[http://www.sem.tsinghua.edu.cn/en/aboutsem/advMem.html](http://www.sem.tsinghua.edu.cn/en/aboutsem/advMem.html)

Henry M. Paulson, Jr. Chairman, Paulson Institute Former U.S. Secretary of the
Treasury Former Chairman and CEO, The Goldman Sachs Group, Inc.

Mary T. Barra Chairman and CEO, General Motors Company

Lloyd C. Blankfein Chairman of the Board, The Goldman Sachs Group, Inc.

Carlos Brito CEO, Anheuser-Busch InBev

Michael L. Corbat CEO, Citigroup Inc.

Michael Dell Chairman and CEO, Dell Technologies

Jamie Dimon Chairman and CEO, JPMorgan Chase & Co.

Laurence D. Fink Chairman and CEO, BlackRock, Inc.

Doug McMillon President and CEO, Walmart Inc.

Elon Musk CEO, Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX) CEO, Tesla, Inc.

Satya Nadella CEO, Microsoft

Brian L. Roberts Chairman and CEO, Comcast Corporation

Ginni Rometty Chairman, President and CEO, IBM

David M. Rubenstein Co-Founder and Co-Executive Chairman, The Carlyle Group

David C. Schmittlein John C Head III Dean, MIT Sloan School of Management

Stephen A. Schwarzman Chairman, CEO and Co-Founder, Blackstone

Mark Zuckerberg Founder and CEO, Facebook

~~~
kaiwen1
This may be the most A-list group of people I've ever seen assembled for
anything. It screams how important China is.

~~~
throwaway2048
I doubt many (or any) of them do much of anything on the board.

~~~
EsssM7QVMehFPAs
Certainly not, but this is exactly how China buys influence by courting the
rich and important.

~~~
Iv
I am wondering, what is the quid pro quo here.

I don't like most of these people, but they don't ring to me like the kind of
people who could be bribed with a seat at a prestigious university's board.

~~~
lozenge
It is about indoctrinating a mindset or bias rather than a direct quid pro
quo.

[https://theintercept.com/2016/04/15/barack-obama-never-
said-...](https://theintercept.com/2016/04/15/barack-obama-never-said-money-
wasnt-corrupting-in-fact-he-said-the-opposite/)

~~~
BoiledCabbage
Wow, the standards we used to hold a president to

~~~
jeegsy
Wrong. We just happened to have a president with those standards. Nothing
about society then suggested we held politicians to any kind of lofty
standards. A certain type had ambitions for higher office. Thats it.

------
freeopinion
What do you call a publicly traded company that manufactures exclusively in
China and expects more than 50% of their revenue to come from China within a
short timeframe? Aren't they a Chinese company?

I've long questioned if Toyota is really a Japanese company, but at least they
have significant manufacturing in Japan. If Apple isn't already a Chinese
company, they will be within a few short years.

I personally don't have anything against buying non-USA products, so I don't
mean this as a condemnation of Toyota or Apple. Just an observation. I
consider the local Chinese restaurant to be an American business. I consider
Apple to be a Chinese business.

~~~
sesuximo
the Chinese govt agrees

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kylecazar
It's hard to say whether to admire the disregard for potentially bad optics or
not. Very tense times.

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devy
For the record, School of Economics and Management (SEM) of Tsinghua
University has always been having high caliber business leaders, Nobel
Laureate, central bank governor and government officials on their board.[1]
e.g.

In fact, I doubt any school has a better advisory board than that of SEM of
Tsinghua's, anywhere in the world.

Even Hardvard / MIT / Yale's school dean/provost are on Tsinghua's board. If
as an CEO, you aren't invited to the board and you want to be global, you are
doing it wrong.

Here is a partial list:

\- Lord Browne of Madingley, Chairman of Huawei UK

\- Henry M. Paulson, Jr., Former U.S. Secretary of the Treasury, Former
Chairman and CEO, The Goldman Sachs Group, Inc.

\- H. Lee Scott, Jr., Former President and CEO, Wal-Mart Stores, Inc.

\- WANG Qishan, Vice-President, People’s Republic of China

\- Jim Breyer, Founder and CEO, Breyer Capital

\- Mary T. Barra, Chairman and CEO, General Motors Company

\- Lloyd C. Blankfein, Chairman of the Board, The Goldman Sachs Group, Inc.

\- Carlos Brito, CEO, Anheuser-Busch InBev

\- CHEN Jining, Mayor, Beijing Municipal Government

\- Elon Musk

\- Mark Zuckerberg

\- Michael L. Corbat, CEO, Citigroup Inc.

\- Michael Dell, Chairman and CEO, Dell Technologies

\- Laurence D. Fink, Chairman and CEO, BlackRock, Inc.

\- Geoffrey Garrett, Dean, The Wharton School of the University of
Pennsylvania

\- Nobuyuki Idei, Former Chairman and Group CEO, Sony Corporation

\- Muhtar Kent, Chairman, The Coca-Cola Company

\- Henry R. Kravis, Co-Chairman and Co-Chief Executive Officer, KKR

\- Harald Krüger, Chairman of the Board of Management, BMW AG

\- Ramon Laguarta, CEO, PepsiCo

\- LIU He, yes the chief U.S.-Sino trade deal negotiator, Vice-Premier, State
Council, People’s Republic of China

\- Jack Ma, Executive Chairman, Alibaba Group

\- Pony Ma, Core Founder, Chairman of the Board and CEO, Tencent

\- Doug McMillon, President and CEO, Walmart Inc.

\- Satya Nadella, CEO, Microsoft

\- Nitin Nohria, George F. Baker Professor of Administration Dean, Harvard
Business School

\- Richard C. Levin Senior Adviser and Former CEO, Coursera President
Emeritus, Yale University

\- Brian L. Roberts Chairman and CEO, Comcast Corporation

\- Ginni Rometty Chairman, President and CEO, IBM

\- David M. Rubenstein Co-Founder and Co-Executive Chairman, The Carlyle Group

\- David C. Schmittlein John C Head III Dean, MIT Sloan School of Management

\- Stephen A. Schwarzman Chairman, CEO and Co-Founder, Blackstone

\- Risto Siilasmaa, Chairman, Nokia Corporation Chairman and Founder, F-Secure
Corporation

\- Kevin Sneader Global Managing Partner, McKinsey & Company

\- Masayoshi Son, Chairman and CEO, SoftBank Group Corp.

\- A. Michael Spence, Professor, Stern School of Business, New York
University, 2001 Nobel Laureate in Economics

\- YI Gang, Governor, People’s Bank of China

[1]:
[http://www.sem.tsinghua.edu.cn/en/aboutsem/advMem.html](http://www.sem.tsinghua.edu.cn/en/aboutsem/advMem.html)

~~~
siruncledrew
That's what the headline did not elucidate well.

People should at least read about Tsinghua University first before
automatically judging it for being Chinese:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tsinghua_University](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tsinghua_University)

~~~
xurias
I mean, the problem isn't the university or the students or the people on the
board. It's how the CCP uses its relationships to push its agenda and
(incompatible-with-ours) values in an oppressive way on non-Chinese entities.
This is just another example of how deep the rot is. (Yes, yes, the US does
the "same thing", and I'll care when the US turns into a dictatorship that
arbitrarily takes your job, livelihood and family for speaking out against it
with zero recourse, transparency or accountability)

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tasogare
Tsinghua University has an interesting history. When the republican party lost
the civil war against the communists, some scholars (including the university
president) left and recreated the university in Taiwan.

That's why there is today the Tsinghua University [1] in China, and the
National Tsing Hua University [2] in Taiwan, with really similar logo.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tsinghua_University](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tsinghua_University)

[2]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Tsing_Hua_University](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Tsing_Hua_University)

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nafizh
Genuinely wondering, how many more Uighur Muslims have to die before
associating with the Chinese Govt. becomes bad optics? I understand this is a
Chinese university but we all know all entities in China serve the agenda of
the Chinese Govt.

~~~
thelittleone
> how many more Uighur Muslims

Sadly it will take a LOT more. Public outrage has an increasingly high tipping
point and a very short lifespan. Governments, Corporations, PR agencies all
know this. Is the average person on the street even aware of the plight of the
Uighur Muslims? Contrast that with the recent forest fires in Brazil.

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paulcarroty
Cool, why not? HK protesters aren't important, better get money&profits from
Chinese university.

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pbreit
That's...weird. Of all the boards Cook could serve on, or not on, he chooses
to join a random Chinese business school? It's hard not to think there's a
quid pro quo going on because it seems completely unnecessary otherwise.

Would be great to see Apple make further progress on manufacturing elsewhere.

~~~
alephnerd
> Tim Cook will work closely with Chinese government officials to promote
> Tsinghua University's economics and management school

Tsinghua is not a random Chinese school - it’s China’s Harvard.

~~~
chronic829
> Tsinghua is not a random Chinese school - it’s China’s Harvard.

But it's still not Harvard.

The question is, "Why not Harvard? Or any other top school in the US?"

~~~
toasterlovin
Because China is important. And, unlike the Arab oil producers, China actually
has the human capital to create a university that competes with Harvard for
prestige. Get used to stuff like this. Tim Cook is about 10 steps ahead of
everybody who gives him a hard time for how Apple deals with China.

~~~
weberc2
Can you elaborate on the importance and how that factors into Apple’s
strategy? Saying that China is important and Tim Cook is Very Smart doesn’t
make for a very enlightening comment nor a suitable rebuttal. If you’re onto
something, I’d like to know what! :)

~~~
toasterlovin
China is already Apple's second largest market. Right now China's GDP per
capita is about $9,600. South Korea has a GDP per capita of about $31k and
Japan has a GDP per capita of about $39k. Assuming that China reaches those
levels at some point in the not too distant future (which seems likely given
cultural and genetic similarities), China will be Apple's largest market. And
they will be where Apple manufactures most of its products. At that point,
China will be as important to Apple as the U.S., possibly more so. This is the
long game that Tim Cook is playing.

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alfiedotwtf
Eh wat?

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droithomme
How wonderful for Tim!

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gigatexal
I’m as diehard an Apple fanboy as they come but I might be in the market for a
new ecosystem...

~~~
ReptileMan
Well the market has great abundance of laptops and mobile phones made in
China. Make your choice :)

