8 ms·

the top comments talking about maps, it's absolutely insane 'The agreement included a pledge from Apple to help Chinese manufacturers develop "the most advance

by klebe 5y ago

the top comments talking about maps, it's absolutely insane 'The agreement included a pledge from Apple to help Chinese manufacturers develop "the most advanced manufacturing technologies," "support the training of high-quality Chinese talents," use more components from Chinese suppliers, sign deals with Chinese software firms, collaborate with research in Chinese universities, and directly invest in Chinese tech companies, as well as assistance with around a dozen Chinese government causes. If there were no objections from either side, the deal would be automatically be extended for an additional year until May 2022, according to the agreement.' 'Apple vowed to invest "many billions of dollars more" than its current expenditure in China, including on new retail stores, research and development facilities, and renewable energy projects. Other internal documents reportedly showed that Apple's pledge amounted to more than $275 billion in spending over a period of five years.' what do American citizens have to do to get this sort of treatment? Seems like a broken record at this point, but we truly have been sold at the absolute highest level. It's one thing to make these deals with a foreign hostile country - it's another to ask yourself: When's the last CEO I heard making these same promises to America? Or to any friendly country for that matter? As if the streets are paved with gold everywhere else? It aches my heart to be a young man in this country and see this be our so-called 'leaders'. I'm confident the tides have already turned against all this nonsense, though, and I look forward to rebuilding industries of the world with good-hearted men & women

systemvoltage 5y ago
What's despicable is that none of the mainstream media (WSJ, NYTimes, WaPo, Boston Globe, CNN, Fox, etc.) are covering this story. The American people atleast deserve to be informed. How is this not the biggest blow to Apple in terms of its relationship with China? For those who want to go to source: https://www.theinformation.com/articles/facing-hostile-chinese-authorities-apple-ceo-signed-275-billion-deal-with-them https://www.theinformation.com/articles/facing-hostile-chine... Does anyone have subscription? Would love to read Archive.is copy. Thank you.
- jjtheblunt 5y ago
  surely they will by the end of the week, after vetting sources?
- tablespoon 5y ago
  > What's despicable is that none of the mainstream media (WSJ, NYTimes, WaPo, Boston Globe, CNN, Fox, etc.) are covering this story. The American people atleast deserve to be informed. That's not true. IMHO, this is part of a larger story (Apple's obsequious compromises with China), and the NY Times has previously reported on other parts: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/17/technology/apple-china-censorship-data.html https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/17/technology/apple-china-ce.... It's seems The Information broke this story, but I doubt it will be very long before other outlets catch up.
  - systemvoltage 5y ago
    I honestly feel like NYTimes is not going to cover it for political reasons. I am happy to be convinced otherwise.
    - tablespoon 5y ago
      > I honestly feel like NYTimes is not going to cover it for political reasons. I am happy to be convinced otherwise. Explain those "political reasons," please.
      - systemvoltage 5y ago
        NYT is extremely predictable - both in its choice of what to inform its viewers as well as what will fit their political stance (globalists). If you need this to be spelled out, either you’re being rhetorical or you’re uninformed - I suspect the former.
        tablespoon 5y ago
        > If you need this to be spelled out, either you’re being rhetorical or you’re uninformed - I suspect the former. No, I suspect you have things wrong in this case, but you're being so vague it's difficult to figure out where the error is. > NYT is extremely predictable - both in its choice of what to inform its viewers as well as what will fit their political stance (globalists). Even if that's true, it's no reason to assume they wouldn't publish this story for some ideological reason, especially given they've published very similar things in the past.
jeswin 5y ago
> It's one thing to make these deals with a foreign hostile country - it's another to ask yourself: When's the last CEO I heard making these same promises to America? Or to any friendly country for that matter? Thank you for saying this. I don't live in the US, but yes it's shocking. My (unpopular) view is that we humans have the ability to focus only on a limited set of issues simultaneously, and we should pick the important ones first. It is appalling that news about secretive 200+ billion deals with Xi's CCP (the greatest threat to freedom since the Brezhnev era) has to compete for attention.
EMIRELADERO 5y ago
Honestly, I'm not trying to sound like I'm speaking in bad faith or provokingly, but why did you ever expect the top executives of a multi-million (or in this case, trillion) dollar corporation to care about anything but profits and their own well-being? It's just like Zuckerberg said, "Company over country". I like to imagine those corporations as a machine with irs unique objective being profit. Every single thing that comes out of their mouths and every single action they perform is done with the expectation that it will sooner or later result in more profit. In this case, the equation came out as "the profit that Apple will earn as a result of this deal will compensate any loss of revenue that could be ever generated because of the public's reaction to it". And that's how it always works, period.
- tablespoon 5y ago
  > Honestly, I'm not trying to sound like I'm speaking in bad faith or provokingly, but why did you ever expect the top executives of a multi-million (or in this case, trillion) dollar corporation to care about anything but profits and their own well-being? It's just like Zuckerberg said, "Company over country". That's a common ideological outlook now, but IIRC it wasn't always so and it doesn't have to be so in the future. Simplistic free market greed-sacks like you describe should be pariahs, and treated as such by society and the government to the point that they find it very hard to make profits.
- jevoten 5y ago
  > why did you ever expect the top executives of a multi-million (or in this case, trillion) dollar corporation to care about anything but profits and their own well-being? Perhaps he expected his government to incentivize/compel them to look at more than just profits? You know, like China is successfully doing. While shady when it comes to foreign influence, it is an absolutely legitimate approach for domestic companies, instead of allowing them to sell out their home country for short-term gain in the name of free markets, that the West was duped into believing is the only moral policy.
champagnecrazy 5y ago
As a young woman I agree klebe.
shrimpx 5y ago
The empathetic perspective is that these CEOs and boards don’t have national allegiance. They are trying to optimize globally, and China is more exploitable in the sense of getting a steeper growth curve out of it.
- neartheplain 5y ago
  The realpolitik perspective is that some countries demand allegiance from companies that operate on their soil (China), while others don't (USA). So Apple has a national allegiance to China in that country, and an allegiance purely to profit in the USA. It's easy to guess which country's citizens will receive more corporate philanthropy. See GP comment for the answer.
jrmg 5y ago
$275 billion in spending over a period of five years sounds like a lot, but I think you might be underestimating how much Apple would spend in China “naturally”. When's the last CEO I heard making these same promises to America? On Apple’s spending in the USA: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/26/business/apple-spending-us.html https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/26/business/apple-spending-u... “The company said its overall spending would reach $430 billion in the United States over the next five years.”
- dkonofalski 5y ago
  Thank you! I swear some people just have blinders to things just so they can be anti-Apple. Apple makes these promises everywhere and especially to America.
pembrook 5y ago
> It aches my heart to be a young man in this country and see this be our so-called 'leaders'. I'm confident the tides have already turned against all this nonsense, though, and I look forward to rebuilding industries of the world with good-hearted men & women I just got finished reading a book about the pre-war climate of 1930s Europe and man this comment sounds scary and nationalist. I’m worried that so many people like you buy into the media positioning of China vs. America. It ratchets up tensions for the purpose of selling clicks. Do you not see how American companies making deals with other countries is beneficial for everyone, including you? The economy is not a zero-sum game. You can create value without destroying it elsewhere. Nobody has to suffer in order for you to thrive. When deals like this are made, it makes it less likely China will do things to piss off the US, and vice-versa. The last thing we need are more tensions. Do you really want to hold people in other countries back from ever achieving the standards of living that you enjoy?
- tablespoon 5y ago
  > When deals like this are made, it makes it less likely China will do things to piss off the US, and vice-versa. The last thing we need are more tensions. Eh, no. That's sounds like a version of the "Golden Arches Theory of Conflict Prevention" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Lexus_and_the_Olive_Tree#Golden_Arches_theory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Lexus_and_the_Olive_Tree#G...), and it's bunk. China's leaders are nationalists, and it's likely they're looking to strengthen themselves to the point where they can do what they want without caring if the US is pissed off or not, and their actual behavior supports this view. They've actually shown themselves to be quite adept at exploiting sentiments like yours while they play a different game. > Do you really want to hold people in other countries back from ever achieving the standards of living that you enjoy? It's not that simple, obviously. Do you want knock people in your own country down (and have them stay down) so that can happen? We're not just talking about standards of living, either. How do you feel about assisting the ascent of an ideologically-incompatible competitor regime (https://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/20/world/asia/chinas-new-leadership-takes-hard-line-in-secret-memo.html https://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/20/world/asia/chinas-new-lea...)?
  - 5y ago
etherael 5y ago
> As if the streets are paved with gold everywhere else? They kind of are, though. Find somebody that is broadly world traveled over a multiple decade period and they will invariably have noticed the stark contrast in the way societies are inside and outside what could be broadly termed the modern western countries. People that have been stuck in those countries their entire lives simply don't understand how badly they have been robbed.
kart23 5y ago
>as well as assistance with around a dozen Chinese government causes. Does anyone have specific info on these? Chinese government causes could be anything, ranging from benign to the truly despicable.

by klebe 5y ago

systemvoltage 5y ago

What's despicable is that none of the mainstream media (WSJ, NYTimes, WaPo, Boston Globe, CNN, Fox, etc.) are covering this story. The American people atleast deserve to be informed. How is this not the biggest blow to Apple in terms of its relationship with China? For those who want to go to source: https://www.theinformation.com/articles/facing-hostile-chinese-authorities-apple-ceo-signed-275-billion-deal-with-them https://www.theinformation.com/articles/facing-hostile-chine... Does anyone have subscription? Would love to read Archive.is copy. Thank you.

jjtheblunt 5y ago
surely they will by the end of the week, after vetting sources?
tablespoon 5y ago
> What's despicable is that none of the mainstream media (WSJ, NYTimes, WaPo, Boston Globe, CNN, Fox, etc.) are covering this story. The American people atleast deserve to be informed. That's not true. IMHO, this is part of a larger story (Apple's obsequious compromises with China), and the NY Times has previously reported on other parts: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/17/technology/apple-china-censorship-data.html https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/17/technology/apple-china-ce.... It's seems The Information broke this story, but I doubt it will be very long before other outlets catch up.
- systemvoltage 5y ago
  I honestly feel like NYTimes is not going to cover it for political reasons. I am happy to be convinced otherwise.
  - tablespoon 5y ago
    > I honestly feel like NYTimes is not going to cover it for political reasons. I am happy to be convinced otherwise. Explain those "political reasons," please.
    - systemvoltage 5y ago
      NYT is extremely predictable - both in its choice of what to inform its viewers as well as what will fit their political stance (globalists). If you need this to be spelled out, either you’re being rhetorical or you’re uninformed - I suspect the former.
      - tablespoon 5y ago
        > If you need this to be spelled out, either you’re being rhetorical or you’re uninformed - I suspect the former. No, I suspect you have things wrong in this case, but you're being so vague it's difficult to figure out where the error is. > NYT is extremely predictable - both in its choice of what to inform its viewers as well as what will fit their political stance (globalists). Even if that's true, it's no reason to assume they wouldn't publish this story for some ideological reason, especially given they've published very similar things in the past.

jeswin 5y ago

> It's one thing to make these deals with a foreign hostile country - it's another to ask yourself: When's the last CEO I heard making these same promises to America? Or to any friendly country for that matter? Thank you for saying this. I don't live in the US, but yes it's shocking. My (unpopular) view is that we humans have the ability to focus only on a limited set of issues simultaneously, and we should pick the important ones first. It is appalling that news about secretive 200+ billion deals with Xi's CCP (the greatest threat to freedom since the Brezhnev era) has to compete for attention.

EMIRELADERO 5y ago

Honestly, I'm not trying to sound like I'm speaking in bad faith or provokingly, but why did you ever expect the top executives of a multi-million (or in this case, trillion) dollar corporation to care about anything but profits and their own well-being? It's just like Zuckerberg said, "Company over country". I like to imagine those corporations as a machine with irs unique objective being profit. Every single thing that comes out of their mouths and every single action they perform is done with the expectation that it will sooner or later result in more profit. In this case, the equation came out as "the profit that Apple will earn as a result of this deal will compensate any loss of revenue that could be ever generated because of the public's reaction to it". And that's how it always works, period.

tablespoon 5y ago
> Honestly, I'm not trying to sound like I'm speaking in bad faith or provokingly, but why did you ever expect the top executives of a multi-million (or in this case, trillion) dollar corporation to care about anything but profits and their own well-being? It's just like Zuckerberg said, "Company over country". That's a common ideological outlook now, but IIRC it wasn't always so and it doesn't have to be so in the future. Simplistic free market greed-sacks like you describe should be pariahs, and treated as such by society and the government to the point that they find it very hard to make profits.
jevoten 5y ago
> why did you ever expect the top executives of a multi-million (or in this case, trillion) dollar corporation to care about anything but profits and their own well-being? Perhaps he expected his government to incentivize/compel them to look at more than just profits? You know, like China is successfully doing. While shady when it comes to foreign influence, it is an absolutely legitimate approach for domestic companies, instead of allowing them to sell out their home country for short-term gain in the name of free markets, that the West was duped into believing is the only moral policy.

champagnecrazy 5y ago

As a young woman I agree klebe.

shrimpx 5y ago

The empathetic perspective is that these CEOs and boards don’t have national allegiance. They are trying to optimize globally, and China is more exploitable in the sense of getting a steeper growth curve out of it.

neartheplain 5y ago
The realpolitik perspective is that some countries demand allegiance from companies that operate on their soil (China), while others don't (USA). So Apple has a national allegiance to China in that country, and an allegiance purely to profit in the USA. It's easy to guess which country's citizens will receive more corporate philanthropy. See GP comment for the answer.

jrmg 5y ago

$275 billion in spending over a period of five years sounds like a lot, but I think you might be underestimating how much Apple would spend in China “naturally”. When's the last CEO I heard making these same promises to America? On Apple’s spending in the USA: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/26/business/apple-spending-us.html https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/26/business/apple-spending-u... “The company said its overall spending would reach $430 billion in the United States over the next five years.”

dkonofalski 5y ago
Thank you! I swear some people just have blinders to things just so they can be anti-Apple. Apple makes these promises everywhere and especially to America.

pembrook 5y ago

> It aches my heart to be a young man in this country and see this be our so-called 'leaders'. I'm confident the tides have already turned against all this nonsense, though, and I look forward to rebuilding industries of the world with good-hearted men & women I just got finished reading a book about the pre-war climate of 1930s Europe and man this comment sounds scary and nationalist. I’m worried that so many people like you buy into the media positioning of China vs. America. It ratchets up tensions for the purpose of selling clicks. Do you not see how American companies making deals with other countries is beneficial for everyone, including you? The economy is not a zero-sum game. You can create value without destroying it elsewhere. Nobody has to suffer in order for you to thrive. When deals like this are made, it makes it less likely China will do things to piss off the US, and vice-versa. The last thing we need are more tensions. Do you really want to hold people in other countries back from ever achieving the standards of living that you enjoy?

tablespoon 5y ago
> When deals like this are made, it makes it less likely China will do things to piss off the US, and vice-versa. The last thing we need are more tensions. Eh, no. That's sounds like a version of the "Golden Arches Theory of Conflict Prevention" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Lexus_and_the_Olive_Tree#Golden_Arches_theory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Lexus_and_the_Olive_Tree#G...), and it's bunk. China's leaders are nationalists, and it's likely they're looking to strengthen themselves to the point where they can do what they want without caring if the US is pissed off or not, and their actual behavior supports this view. They've actually shown themselves to be quite adept at exploiting sentiments like yours while they play a different game. > Do you really want to hold people in other countries back from ever achieving the standards of living that you enjoy? It's not that simple, obviously. Do you want knock people in your own country down (and have them stay down) so that can happen? We're not just talking about standards of living, either. How do you feel about assisting the ascent of an ideologically-incompatible competitor regime (https://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/20/world/asia/chinas-new-leadership-takes-hard-line-in-secret-memo.html https://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/20/world/asia/chinas-new-lea...)?
- 5y ago

etherael 5y ago

> As if the streets are paved with gold everywhere else? They kind of are, though. Find somebody that is broadly world traveled over a multiple decade period and they will invariably have noticed the stark contrast in the way societies are inside and outside what could be broadly termed the modern western countries. People that have been stuck in those countries their entire lives simply don't understand how badly they have been robbed.

kart23 5y ago

>as well as assistance with around a dozen Chinese government causes. Does anyone have specific info on these? Chinese government causes could be anything, ranging from benign to the truly despicable.