How Apple Fueled China's Economic and Technological Rise

KQED's Forum

KQED

Politics, News, News Commentary

4.6 • 656 Ratings

🗓️ 6 June 2025

⏱️ 56 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

The prevailing narrative about Apple in China over the last two decades is that the Cupertino company took advantage of low wages and weak labor laws to ship out close to half a billion devices per year. Journalist Patrick McGee says that narrative isn’t wrong, but it misses “the biggest piece of the puzzle: that Beijing allowed Apple’s activities so that China could exploit Apple and become a tech powerhouse in its own right.” We talk to McGee about his new book “Apple in China” and the threats the company faces from AI and the Trump administration. Guests: Patrick McGee, San Francisco correspondent, Financial Times - author, "Apple in China: The Capture of the World's Greatest Company" Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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0:58.8	From KQED in San Francisco, I'm Rachel Myro and Fermina Kim.
1:19.8	Coming up on forum, Apple users don't just use iPhones, iPads, and such. We love them.
1:27.2	The design, the reliability, the relative data
1:29.8	security, it's hard to accept, as you have to accept after reading Patrick McGee's new book,
1:35.7	Apple in China, that your beloved iPhone relies on a labor system we would never accept for
1:42.1	ourselves here in the U.S. That Apple's rise in the last 25 years is the result of a codependent and toxic to us all
1:49.8	relationship with China that not even President Trump can untangle.
1:54.6	That's next after this news.
2:06.8	This is Forum. I'm Rachel Myro in for Meeh.
	...

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