[zenapollo]

I don't think Cook gets enough credit for this [0] - Book: Apple in China. (Author Interview [1])

It's an undisputed damning account of how Cook was used by China to train millions of Chinese electronics manufacturers, managers, and engineers. The US took the most advanced industrial electronics manufacturing tech, and handed the expertise on a silver platter it to a long term strategic enemy.

Frankly, he shouldn't legally have even been able to do this. But that he was, he ought to be crowned one of China's greatest champions of this century.

0. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_in_China 1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SerbnYhhw7s

[pjc50]

When people discuss this subject, I wonder what they think the counterfactual world would have looked like. Do people think China could have been kept backwards forever? I notice nobody goes around accusing Maurice Chang of doing this. Or W Edwards Deming.

[avidiax]

According to the book, Apple had a special team to prevent divorces among the engineers sent to Asia. That's how long they were over there training.

An argument can be made that Apple nearly singlehandedly advanced China's consumer electronics manufacturing by 20 years, and hastened the decline of U.S. manufacturing while doing it.

China doesn't allow key AI engineers and scientists to go overseas. They literally have exit bans and confiscated passports. The west could have ordered companies like Apple to stop sending engineers, banned companies like Boeing and Rolls Royce from building factories in China, and retained massive wealth, expertise, and national strategic advantage, but allowed it to be pissed away for quarterly profits.

[pjc50]

> The west .. Boeing and Rolls Royce

Boeing is a US company. RR is, last time I looked, a UK company. "The West" isn't a coherent political unit.

Besides, this is the exact opposite of the FDI strategy of past decades. How far should the ban on overseas FDI go? Ban on investing in South America? Full capital controls? As you mention, passport confiscation (!) for key nationals? I don't think any of this would have worked for "the west" at any point past about 1970, or even post-WW2.

[avidiax]

Airplane and jet engine manufacturing are literally defense industries.

Corporations operate at the discretion of the local government. Corporate charters could be revoked or threatened to be revoked to preserve national interests.

I'm not saying that I agree with or recommend the mechanisms that China uses. I'm saying that the West actually does have alternative mechanisms if it wanted to try.

As it stands, we are now under a ticking clock before China creates competitive, commercial and military airplane industry and begins to massively undercut Airbus and Boeing, and it was our own companies that wound the clock.

[andrekandre]

  > Do people think China could have been kept backwards forever?

its what the vice prez literally said in a speech; you can look it up on youtube...

fwiw, i have no idea if people that say such things are sincere but sending 100's of billions of dollars investment to china doesn't sound like they expected them to take it and turn around into their biggest competitors otherwise they would never have done it imo... but i'm not a billionaire so what do i know ^^y

[gedy]

I think it's more the taking (or at least not growing) skills, jobs, know-how from the US and giving to China, irrespective of if they would have developed on their own in any case. It's not about keeping China down, etc. People like to compare this with Japan in the 1980s, but Japan was indisputably an ally of the US, whereas China has never been.

[zdp7]

> Japan was indisputably an ally of the US, whereas China has never been.

Except for the time we were indisputably not allies with Japan and were with China.

[gedy]

Correct, I mean PRC, not China per se. Japan as ally meaning post war we have military bases there.

[unethical_ban]

Likening postwar occupied Japan, who is still a military and economic partner of the US, to 2000s-2010s China is certainly a choice.

[shimman]

No, but it's kind of pathetic that the elites in America hallowed out our manufacturing capabilities and condemning tens of millions to abject poverty so their shares can be worth slightly more as a sign of societal sickness.

[pjc50]

> condemning tens of millions to abject poverty

I think you're overstating your point a bit; I'm not convinced that the tens of millions are that much worse off than their counterparts in poorer parts of China. Was there ever a massive assembly plant for iPhones in the US?

(also, everyone in this subthread seems to be arguing that the US should be at least in part a planned economy with state-directed industry?)

[shimman]

Go visit something called "the rustbelt" (not a term of endearment) and get back to me.

One thing you can always count on about HN are extremely out of touched tech workers that ignore poverty in their country that they helped propagate because "fuck you, I've got mine."

Hopefully it doesn't come back to bite you in the next decade.

[barrkel]

There's an element of revisionism to this perspective. It used to be thought that integration with the global economy would gradually bring more alignment with Western values as well.

The ideas was that a rising middle class would demand more say in running the country. That elites would need to become accountable to the people, ideally via democracy. That geopolitical competition would be positive sum.

[zenapollo]

That idea was minorly present during Clinton and Bush, by the time Obama was in office I think it was clear that was never going to happen. The book covers the period from 2016 on, so long after that neocon dream.

[physicles]

The idea lingered for longer than that. China under Hu Jintao wasn’t exactly friendly to the west, but it was Xi who really set China on its present course to build a multi-polar world, make real noise about reunification with Taiwan, etc.

This new direction didn’t become clear to both sides of the aisle in the US until a year or two into Xi’s tenure. If someone else other than Xi had been chosen, we would likely have a very different China today.

[spongebobstoes]

I don't see these ideas too much anymore. I wonder if it's because America doesn't seem to hold elites accountable to the people

even still, China has westernized a lot over the last 20 years, both in quality of life and in social values

regardless of values, offshoring valuable skills is a way to bring about more equality, but not a way to ensure American dominance

I don't know that American dominance is a good thing

[barrkel]

Hegemony is great for peace, but I think it inevitably turns into a kind of imperialism, even when well-intentioned.

[epistasis]

> he shouldn't legally have even been able to do this

What law do you want to write to make it so that knowledge can't be transferred to other countries?

In the mid 20th century, the Green Revolution, partly led by Norman Borlaug, fed billions, and was a huge transfer of knowledge to other countries, and hugely beneficial for all of humanity. (The critiques, well they exist but they are refinements, not critiques that would justify not doing the Green Revolution).

In the case of Apple in China, this was not a one-sided transaction, both sides benefited massively.

Now I do think we should be encouraging the US to compete more, which was what the Biden administration was really good at getting going. But mere ban of commerce, and not providing the industrial policy for US industry to catch up China's excellence, leave us in a world where we are all poorer, both the US and China.

The world is not a zero-sum place, capitalism and technological change are in fact quite positive sum, and when we act like everything is zero-sum we are all worse off.

[BeetleB]

> What law do you want to write to make it so that knowledge can't be transferred to other countries?

Actually, this is fairly standard via export control laws. When a certain technology is deemed critical, it can be put under export control. When I worked in the semiconductor space, some of the advanced tech we had was subject to these laws. Countries came under different tiers - we could freely discuss the tech with most European countries, but had to be a lot more careful with China and Russia. We couldn't/wouldn't hire Chinese/Russian nationals unless they already had a green card (the legal process was too challenging).

Of course, not saying electronics manufacturing should have been in that bucket. But there is plenty of precedence.

[epistasis]

Thanks, that seems like a reasonable way to do it, if it were to be done, though the types of manufacturing would have to be very specific.

We could perhaps outsource mass precision manufacturing of aluminum iphone and macbook cases to Germany, or try to build up the industry over time in the US that would enable such manufacturing. But such multi-year delays that are kinda-sorta in the interest of a nation but not at all in the immediate interest of a private company and US consumers, imposed by politicians that have not bothered to dive deep into the issue but are instead responding to half-informed populist revolt, seem like a dangerous path.

If something like that were to be done, a carrot approach is far more likely to yield better outcomes than the stick approach of export controls, IMHO.

[maxglute]

The book's thesis is frankly unwarranted Apple glazing. Asian Tigers trained PRC decades before Apple. Muh designed in California and manufactured in China was always Cupertino hands Chinese factory specs and Chinese engineers and workers building it into reality. US manufacturing already in the shits by then, the idea that Apple substantively "elevated" PRC manufacturing is huffing copium. PRC process engineering was always the hardest part of the equation that somehow gets credited to US. PRC manufacturing made Apple, not the other way around.

The reality is PRC already had magnitude more high end manufacturing talent by the time Apple entered PRC already and they're the ones that made Apple scribbles at scale possible. The stories of PRC manufacturers having stupendously fast line turn arounds, making changes in hours should disabuse the notion they needed learning, when they already knew how to execute at scale. Apple's derisked manufacturing in other countries still can't do this, PRC was doing this on day one - see overnight turnaround to retool iPhone line from plastic to glass screen 20 years ago. Apple went to PRC because PRC already had competently trained manufacturing workforce, and only one that can operate at speed + scale. Apple buying a few 1000 CNC machines doesn't tip the balance remotely in Apple's favour - if sector moved towards CNC and tighter tolerances, PRC industry would have simply followed, Apple $$$ is nice, but PRC doesn't need Apple $$$ - capex is not a bottleneck for their system. And Apple would have never push enough goods and make $$$ without PRC.