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If there’s one word you associate with Apple,
the culmination of every commercial, product,
feature, and perfectly-rehearsed keynote,
the company would like it to be privacy.
Anyone can use the word, just as I can put
a Tesla bumper sticker on my Hummer, but only
Apple has the business model to prove it.
And it certainly takes every opportunity to
remind us.
In 2016, when the FBI demanded it create a
special backdoor, Tim Cook personally and
very publicly refused, saying it would “undermine
the very freedoms and liberty our government
is meant to protect.”
It was one of the highest-profile, riskiest,
and most controversial debates over privacy
in recent times.
But, ultimately, whether you think for profit
or on principle, it fought the government
and won.
That same year, on the other side of the world,
China passed The Cyber Security Law, requiring
that Apple store Chinese iCloud data inside
the country and prompting fear that the government
could access it for surveillance.
This time, though, no letter to customers,
no principled stand, no long, protracted fight.
With 20% of its sales and most of its manufacturing
in China, Apple has little choice but to comply
- censoring apps, podcasts, and services in
the world’s largest country.
But, as risks grow and strategic calculations
change, will this tension ever reach a boiling
point?
Will there come a day when, either by choice
or force, Apple leaves the country altogether?
Every year, Apple faces an impossible task:
To source the materials for, assemble, deliver,
and meet the demand for millions of new iPhones.
In total secrecy.
The insane scale of the device is both its
biggest blessing and its biggest curse.
The single most expensive component of the
iPhone, for example, is thought to be the
OLED screen, at around $110 per unit.
If Samsung increased the price of that one
part by just $5, it would cost Apple an extra
billion dollars over two hundred million devices.
The previous-generation, 2013 Mac Pro was
assembled in Austin Texas but only because
of its relatively low demand.
The iPhone simply doesn’t have that luxury.
The vast majority of Apple products, therefore,
are assembled by contract manufacturers like
Foxconn, Pegatron, and Wistron in China.
Although not, contrary to popular thinking,
strictly because of cost.
Average monthly wages in China have more than
doubled from $449 US dollars in 2010 to nearly
a thousand in 2018.
That’s about the same as many European countries,
like Latvia, Lithuania, and Croatia, and far
higher than other south and southeast Asian
countries like the Philippines and Vietnam
- where companies like Nike, Adidas, and Under
Armor have moved much of their production.
But while makers of clothing can, for the
most part, hire the cheapest hands, Apple
and companies like it, have to be a bit more
selective.
What China has, more than any other country,
are massive amounts of technically-skilled
workers in highly concentrated areas, on demand.
Here factories are more cities than buildings.
When one manufacturer of electronics needed
to quickly increase production to keep up
with demand, it was able to hire 35,000 workers
in under six weeks.
It’s this flexibility that allows Apple
to rapidly scale-up production in the summer
months leading up to the release of a new
iPhone.
Altogether, about a million and a half Chinese
are involved in assembling Apple products,
and another two and a half million Chinese
developers create iOS apps.
But even before assembly, Apple relies heavily
on Chinese materials.
Everything from cameras, to speakers, motors,
and batteries are made with 17 elements called
lanthanides, or Rare Earth Metals.
And, despite their name, they aren’t that
hard to find.
There are also significant reserves in Brazil,
Vietnam, Russia, and India.
Having and being willing to use them, though,
are two very different things.
Measured by actual production, China has a near monopoly, generating 70% of the world’s
supply.
120,000 metric tons a year to 2nd place Australia’s
20,000.
The problem is that, although abundant, only
in a few areas are these metals clustered
in high enough concentrations to justify mining
them.
And even then, they’re an absolute headache
to deal with.
Because they bond so easily with other compounds
and minerals, after mining, they have to be
chemically separated, often from radioactive
and carcinogenic materials.
Processing one ton of rare earths may generate
2,000 tons of toxic waste.
In other words, it’s expensive, time-consuming,
and really bad for the environment.
From roughly 1965 to 85, over half of the
world’s supply came from a single source
in California, called the Mountain Pass Mine.
Then, around 2000, it was shut down for environmental
reasons.
At the same time, China realized their strategic
value and took the golden opportunity they
had just been given to dominate the entire
industry.
Should China ever withhold them for political
leverage, it would, at least temporarily,
devastate the U.S. military, and, in the process,
American companies.
China’s president Xi Jinping has hinted
at this possibility by visiting a Rare Earth
mine during the trade war.
And the supply chain is only the first of
Apple’s challenges.
The other is the consumer market.
Under Tim Cook, China has been a major focus
of the company - launching a dual-sim version
of the iPhone, QR-code support, and localized
features like improvements to Cantonese typing.
It’s also leaned-in to its cultural preferences
- offering a special red edition of the iPhone
and raising prices which helps it be seen
as more of a luxury product.
And, for the most part, it’s worked.
The year it was introduced, the iPhone X was
the most popular phone in China, and the country
became about as big a market for Apple as
all of Europe combined.
But it’s also seen the risks.
As Chinese economic growth slowed, so did
Apple’s success.
And it now finds itself caught in the crossfire
of US-China tensions.
The same conspicuous design which made the
iPhone a status symbol, becomes a liability
during times of increased nationalism.
When China’s government plays anti-American
propaganda films and Huawei’s ban is perceived
as protecting weaker American competitors,
owning an iPhone can become embarrassing.
According to Goldman Sachs, a retaliatory
ban could lose Apple almost a third of its
overall profit.
Of course, interdependence is a two-way street
- Apple also contributes an estimated $24
billion US dollars a year to China’s economy.
It’s not, unless things get significantly
worse, in China’s best interest to push
out Apple completely.
But it is in its best interest to keep pushing
the boundaries by exerting as much control
over Western companies like Apple as possible.
If Apple will ban VPNs, censor dissenting
apps, and move iCloud data on its orders,
there’s no reason to think it’ll stop
there.
The idea that Apple would give up on one of
its most important sources of revenue is almost
unthinkable, but that’s exactly why China
can ask so much of it.
At some point, the things that, individually,
wouldn’t be reason enough for Apple to leave
China: Slowing economic growth, Tariffs, Censorship,
Data storage laws, competitors like Huawei
and WeChat, and poor respect for intellectual
property, together may hit a critical mass
that Apple will no longer tolerate.
In the U.S., Tim Cook can persuade the public
and successfully hold back the FBI.
In China, though, it’s all or nothing.
With every demand, Apple has to decide whether
saying ‘no’ is worth losing 20% of its
revenue and, perhaps even, the most important
part of its supply chain.
In 2010, Google did just that.
After years of following China’s censorship
rules, it was, ultimately, a straw that broke
the camel’s back: Google noticed the Gmail
accounts of human rights activists were being
hacked into.
Thus far, Tim Cook has always preferred to
engage.
Unlike other tech CEOs, for example, he continues
taking meetings with the U.S. president, despite
disagreeing on many issues.
Apple argues better it stay in China than
cede the market to a more questionable competitor,
or someone who doesn’t minimize the amount
of data they collect in the first place.
In the meantime, it’s preparing for the
worst.
Pegatron is investing in production sites
in Indonesia, while Foxconn and Wistron look
to India.
In 1909, Norman Angell wrote The Great Illusion,
for which he received a Nobel Peace Prize.
In it, he argued the economies of the world
were so connected and so dependent on one
another that the cost of conflict would simply
be too great.
States, he said, now had too much to lose
from going to war.
He was right.
And so is anyone who dismisses conflict between
China and Apple.
Strategically, financially, logically speaking,
it would be foolish for either one to give
up the economic benefits.
And yet five years after The Great Illusion
was published, began one of the most deadly
conflicts in history.
Circumstances can change in an instant, and
even the most profitable company on earth
is vulnerable.
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