Apple in China, a bestselling book by a former Financial Times reporter, argues that Apple helped build China’s electronics industry—and, in doing so, enabled a new challenger to the West. This essay pushes back.
Drawing on more than a decade of reporting across Taiwan and China, the author examines Apple’s supply chain from the factory floor up, challenging the idea that Apple trained Chinese firms or nurtured a complete indigenous ecosystem. Instead, the piece shows how Apple’s deepest investments flowed primarily to Taiwanese suppliers, while many of China’s most formidable tech companies emerged from a different source altogether: the massive smartphone manufacturing ecosystem centered in Shenzhen.
From MacBook production to iPhone component economics, and from Foxconn to Huawei, this is a ground-level reassessment of where China’s real technological momentum comes from—and why Apple’s role may be far more limited than commonly believed.
cwnewsroom.substack.com
Drawing on more than a decade of reporting across Taiwan and China, the author examines Apple’s supply chain from the factory floor up, challenging the idea that Apple trained Chinese firms or nurtured a complete indigenous ecosystem. Instead, the piece shows how Apple’s deepest investments flowed primarily to Taiwanese suppliers, while many of China’s most formidable tech companies emerged from a different source altogether: the massive smartphone manufacturing ecosystem centered in Shenzhen.
From MacBook production to iPhone component economics, and from Foxconn to Huawei, this is a ground-level reassessment of where China’s real technological momentum comes from—and why Apple’s role may be far more limited than commonly believed.
Did Tim Cook Create China’s Manufacturing Dominance? Three Things “Apple in China” Gets Wrong
Liang-rong Chen
cwnewsroom.substack.com