When will American companies making money in China acknowledge that the Chinese Communist Party state is very, very bad and that they should not interact with this entity?
In an item headlined “Red Apple,” the “Red” not being a reference to the color of apples, Breitbart Business Digest says that “China ordered Apple—an American company that does incalculable amounts of business in
China—to delete popular messaging apps like WhatsApp, Signal, and Telegram from the iPhone app store to comply with the communist regime’s censorship demand. Perhaps the pseudo-communists in Silicon Valley will begin to understand the threat real communists pose to western values finally, but we won’t hold our collective breath.”
This is not the straw that broke the camel’s back. Apple is doing as told. Apple feels that it has no choice. After all, the Chinese Communist Party gave it an order. The Wall Street Journal reports (“China Orders Apple to Remove Popular Messaging Apps,” April 19, 2024):
Meta Platforms’ WhatsApp and Threads as well as messaging platforms Signal and Telegram were taken off the Chinese App Store Friday. Apple said it was told to remove certain apps because of national security concerns, without specifying which.
“We are obligated to follow the laws in the countries where we operate, even when we disagree,” an Apple spokesperson said.
These messaging apps, which allow users to exchange messages and share files individually and in large groups, combined have around three billion users globally. They can only be accessed in China through virtual private networks that take users outside China’s Great Firewall, but are still commonly used.
Beijing has often viewed such platforms with caution, concerned that these apps could be used by its citizens to spread negative content and cause social unrest. Much of the news China censors at home often makes it beyond the Great Firewall through such channels.
The Cyberspace Administration of China asked Apple to remove WhatsApp and Threads from the App Store because both contain political content that includes problematic mentions of the Chinese president, according to a person familiar with the matter. The Apple spokesperson said that wasn’t part of the reasoning….
The removals follow a string of moves Apple has made in its largest overseas market to comply with China’s increasing censorship and tightening rules on data security.
Did an Apple spokesperson, contradicting somebody else at Apple “familiar with the matter,” really say that China’s desire to censor “problematic” political content, such as content taking swipes at China’s fat evil dictator, “wasn’t part of the reasoning”? “No comment” would have been a superior comment.
Apple would certainly have to scramble if it left China, a huge market. The firm might, in that case, even have to dip into its cash reserves. And all it has on hand is $162 billion or so.
