[derefr]

A multinational corporation is not actually one thing. It's a distinct entity per country, that all pretends to be one global entity, but isn't.

Are you saying that Apple China—a Chinese corporation, Apple Corp.'s subsidiary—shouldn't be aiding and abetting its own (authoritarian) government?

Or are you saying that Apple Corp (a US company) should be attempting to compel Apple China to break Chinese law? (What do you think Apple China's response to this must, necessarily, be?)

Or are you saying that Apple China shouldn't exist?

I'm not sure there are any other alternatives than these, and none of them sound very sensible.

[wyuenho]

First of all, read your history and news. You don't have to go far, just go back a few years when the Chinese government were blocking the App Store. This isn't a law, this is literally just some arbitrary decision passed down in a piece of paper from the top.

Second of all, even if it is a statute, you don't respect the law in China, you respect the MAN. What's legal and what's not depends on not the independent judiciary, as there isn't one, but how well your relationship is with key government officials.

Thirdly, all these world-wide subsidiary are there mainly for tax and payroll. Apple China does not operate independently as it's wholely owned by Apple US. Also, I don't know if you are aware, this is likely the decision made directly by Tim Cook if you've seen his activity in China recently.

The solution is very easy, appeal to Trump and I'm sure his ilks will go to work. You may not like Trump, but the outcome surely will be infinitely better than compromising your own core values and customer's trust.

[derefr]

> What's legal and what's not depends on not the independent judiciary, as there isn't one, but how well your relationship is with key government officials.

Yes, so your first two paragraphs reduce to an argument over semantics. When I say "law in China", I mean "what you will be punished by the Chinese government for doing [whether for cronyist reasons or not]." It's "the law" in the Libertarian sense of "the whims of the people who can command people with guns to come shoot you without reproach."

> Thirdly, all these world-wide subsidiary are there mainly for tax and payroll. Apple China does not operate independently as it's wholely owned by Apple US.

Yes, that is how multinational corporations work in every other sense. That is not how multinational corporations work when it comes to interactions between the subsidiary and the subsidiary's government, because—and consider this carefully for a moment: the employees of the subsidiary corporation—including those operating its distribution logistics pipeline within China—are Chinese citizens.

Tim Cook can try telling these employees what to do, and in all other ways he'll succeed, but the Chinese government can override Tim Cook in this one way, because the people he's giving orders to here are Chinese, and are beholden to the Chinese government. They're not going to do something that's illegal for them personally to do, just because their boss tells them to. They'd just end up quitting, and the people who'd replace them would end up quitting, and so forth. And Tim Cook knows that, which is why he doesn't tell them to do things that the Chinese government would consider illegal.

Which includes, for those distribution-pipeline employees, distributing iOS devices that don't have Chinese-government-mandated modifications to the firmware. Those employees would be arrested for that. So Tim Cook orders his US employees to make the modifications to the firmware, such that those Chinese employees can then comply with the "law in China" when they distribute the phones. (Which is really to say, such that Apple retains Chinese employees at all.)

The only other choice he has (since "force your Chinese employees to get arrested" is not actually a workable strategy) is not distributing the phones in China in the first place.

Sure, he can try to get the "law in China" changed. Every corporation is always lobbying in every market they're in. But it doesn't usually work; if it did, we'd be living in a far more dystopian-corporatist world than we already do. ;)