The New York Times published a report that Apple has bowed to the Chinese Communist Party, ensuring that content Beijing does not like does not appear in its apps, and that it is cooperating with China’s Cybersecurity Law by storing Chinese users’ personal data in a Chinese data management center and handing it over to the Chinese government.
The New York Times quoted current and former Apple employees as pointing out on the 17th that Apple’s cell phone has leaped to the top of the global market capitalization in the past 20 years by relying on China, that almost all of Apple’s products are assembled in China, and that the Greater China region accounts for about 1/5 of Apple’s revenue, and that the Chinese government is using this to blackmail Apple into giving up its image of protecting civil liberties and privacy. To cater to the Chinese market, Apple even removed the phrase “products designed by Apple California”.
Apple engineers and independent data security experts say these concessions will make it nearly impossible for Apple to prevent the Chinese government from accessing Chinese users’ email, photos, contact information, calendar and location data.
In addition to the loss of Chinese users’ personal data, Apple has also removed a large number of apps in recent years that feature “sensitive content” including Tiananmen Square, Tibetan independence and Taiwan independence, among others, to comply with Chinese officials’ requests. As long as it involves topics that Beijing considers taboo, Apple will take it down. Apple has banned apps for Chinese iPhones about Tibet’s exiled spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama, while allowing apps developed by units of the Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps, which has been accused of detaining and abusing Uighurs, to be downloaded.
The New York Times reported that some 55,000 apps from Apple’s China App Store have disappeared without a trace since 2017, most of which can still be found in Apple’s App Store in other countries.
Nicholas Bequelin, director of Amnesty International’s East Asia division, told the New York Times that Apple helps the Chinese government control the Internet and has become an important part of China’s entire censorship machine.
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