After TikTok chief’s grilling in Washington, Apple’s Tim Cook is all smiles in Beijing
Apple
CEO Tim Cook gave a show of support for China as a market and manufacturing
base during a visit to Beijing Saturday, even as trade and tech sector tensions
escalate between the United States and the world’s second-largest economy.
Apple and
China had “grown together” over the past three decades, Cook told the
government-organized China Development Forum, adding that he was
thrilled to be back in the country, which only reopened its borders this year
after abandoning its strict zero-Covid policy. The last time Cook visited China
was in 2019.
“We have a
very large supply chain in China. We also have a thriving App Store,” the Apple
chief was quoted as saying in state-run China Daily.
Cook’s visit
has raised eyebrows in some quarters, given the ongoing tech battle between the
United States and China and reports that Apple has been looking to India as a
potential alternative production base.
On Friday,
Cook had posted a picture of himself smiling with customers and staff at the
Apple store in the shopping district of Sanlitun on China’s Twitter-like social
media site Weibo.
That post
came just a day after Shou Zi Chew, the CEO of TikTok was grilled in a
five-hour hearing before a Congressional committee in Washington, where US
lawmakers remain convinced the Chinese-made social media app represents an urgent threat to national security.
China’s
state media was quick to seize on the apparent contrast between the two CEO’s
experiences.
“TikTok CEO
was under siege at the US hearing, while Apple CEO was enthusiastically
welcomed by people at its flagship Chinese store. This shows that China is the
one that is actually practicing fair and free trade,” the state-run Global
Times quoted one netizen as saying.
The Biden
administration has demanded that the Chinese owners of TikTok sell their share
of the company or face a ban from the United States, the app’s most important
market. China’s commerce ministry said Thursday that a forced sale of TikTok
would “seriously damage” global investors’ confidence in the United States.
The US has
concerns about the company’s data collection practices, and these have been
exacerbated by the popularity of TikTok and other Chinese apps. Of the 10 most
popular free apps on Apple’s US store, four were developed with Chinese
technology: TikTok, shopping app Temu, fast fashion retailer Shein
and video editing app CapCut, which like TikTok is also owned by ByteDance.
Apple
meanwhile has reportedly been rethinking the extent of its ties with China.
The
company’s supply chains were disrupted by China’s harsh coronavirus rules and
there have been violent
protests over wages at the world’s largest iPhone assembly
factory at Foxconn’s campus in China’s Henan province.
Amid
these problems, and wider trade disagreements between Washington and Beijing,
Apple has reportedly been looking at India as a
potential alternative manufacturing hub for the iPhone
14.
However,
many analysts say that even if Apple can add diversity to its supply base it is
likely to continue to depend on China for a long time yet.
Cook
said in an earnings call last year that India was a “hugely exciting market”
and “a major focus” for Apple that recorded “very strong double digits year
over year,” indicating its high interest to expand production in the South
Asian country.
While
the rising US-China tensions have led to suggestions the world’s two largest
economies could “decouple,” recent data shows trade between them hit a record
high in 2022.
Bilateral
goods trade between the countries rose to $690.6 billion last year, according
to official US data.
Exports to
China increased by $2.4 billion to $153.8 billion, while imports of Chinese
products rose by $31.8 billion to $536.8 billion according to the US Bureau of
Economic Analysis.
The data suggests that the idea of
“decoupling,” or reducing mutual reliance in a range of areas, is much more
evident in policy discussions in Washington rather than on-the-ground trade
reality.
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