What Apple Has to Fear from China
But Cook couldn’t assuage fears about the biggest reason for the revenue decline: a twenty-six-per-cent drop in sales in China, Taiwan, and Hong Kong, accounting for fifty-eight per cent of the over-all decline in Apple’s growth.
.. China is enormously important to Apple and other tech companies right now. The country’s billion-plus consumers represent a tremendous opportunity for growth. When China’s economy slows, as it has recently, Apple’s revenues are inevitably hurt.
.. China views the proliferation of Western, and especially U.S., technology as a stealth attempt to assert American economic and political power at its expense. Through that lens, blocking Western content and Western companies is an act of national defense. It is also a challenge to the notion of a liberating and open Internet, and China, in particular, has tried to build a wall around its citizens, not only via censorship and surveillance but by acting to limit the influence of foreign companies and organizations that might undermine Communist Party control.
.. The pace at which China is building its walled-off world, filled with hardware and software created by Chinese companies, with only selectively allowed non-Chinese content, is accelerating.