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Notice that Apple deploys compliance in China, as opposed to the malicious compliance they use in the EU or US. Apple is quite obedient in China. That's becau

Notice that Apple deploys compliance in China, as opposed to the malicious compliance they use in the EU or US. Apple is quite obedient in China. That's because it doesn't want its executives in China to be disappeared, or denied an exit visa, or simply arrested arbitrarily.

EZ-E 3y ago
While I'm sure Apple worries about the safety of their executives - the main reason is probably they just want to keep the access to the Chinese market. As factories move away from China, the government has less and less reasons to let them eat their local mobile market share.
- dkjaudyeqooe 3y ago
  They want to keep access to the US and EU market as well, they just don't fear them in the same way.
traceroute66 3y ago
> That's because it doesn't want its executives in China to be disappeared, or denied an exit visa, or simply arrested arbitrarily. Well, to be fair, there are also other more practical factors at play ! 1. The sheer size of the market. Population of China is bigger than that of the US and the EU combined. 2. Although Apple are working on establishing manufacturing elsewhere, a large portion of their manufacturing still happens in China at the moment. I suspect, if you were in Apple's shoes, loosing (1), (2) or both is a far worse position to be in than one or two executives "disappearing". Executives "disappearing" is of course bad, but they are ultimately replaceable. Loosing the Chinese market or having constraints put on your manufacturing at short notice is a significantly bigger problem. Its the same reason Microsoft famously had no choice but to show the Chinese the Windows source code. I'm not defending China. I'm just saying, if you want to have business operations in a country (China or otherwise), you play by their rules. Being a large multi-national will only ultimately give you so much leeway with the authorities.
asimovfan 3y ago
The only reason is money and none of what you wrote.
- Nextgrid 3y ago
  Money is involved in the EU situation as well. It’s just that China has prior art of its swift enforcement of its rules and no tolerance for bad faith, while the EU has prior art of the opposite.
- dkjaudyeqooe 3y ago
  You don't think those happen? Wasn't really my point though.
initplus 3y ago
This isn’t a China specific thing. The story of Carlos Ghosn is a particularly worrying example out of Japan.
- ffsm8 3y ago
  The difference is that your example fled while most likely being guilty and mostly just wanted to evade prosecution, in China there is no need for any actual crime
  - 2OEH8eoCRo0 3y ago
    https://travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/traveladvisories/traveladvisories/china-travel-advisory.html https://travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/traveladvisories/... > Reconsider travel to Mainland China due to the arbitrary enforcement of local laws, including in relation to exit bans, and the risk of wrongful detentions.
  - initplus 3y ago
    He was held in solitary confinement for 108 days for a white collar non-violent first offence. Nobody should be subject to such conditions, for any offence. It is state sponsored torture. The Japanese justice system is dysfunctional, and it has prevented the case from being investigated fairly and appropriately. No justice system that's actually fair can have a 99.8% conviction rate at trial. It's a process designed to achieve convictions and punishment, not actually discover the truth.
Nextgrid 3y ago
I think it’s a combination of: 1) China has demonstrated plenty of times that it is not to be messed with, while EU, if anything (especially with GDPR) has demonstrated that you can keep breaking the rules and even a history of obvious bad faith is not a problem. 2) China has a successful domestic smartphone/tech industry that can (and does) compete with Apple. The EU doesn’t. It’s a much easier decision for China to kick out Apple than for the EU to do so. 3) I believe Apple also depends on China for manufacturing, so pissing them off could go beyond a national ban on sales and even affect production of international devices.
- inamorty 3y ago
  The EU is taking a more aggressive tack in recent years: * Amazon was fined $908 million in 2022. * Google was fined $113 million in the same year. * Instagram, owned by Meta was fined $506 million. Each of these fines would be drastically increased with further non-compliance
  - rasz 3y ago
    Intel was fines over $1 Billion by EU in 2009 for paying off manufacturers/retailers to exclude AMD, hasnt paid a single dollar yet.
  - Nextgrid 3y ago
    > Meta > Each of these fines would be drastically increased with further non-compliance Meta has a history of non-compliance, bad faith and obvious incentive to breach EU regulations given they are in direct opposition to their business model. It has been in breach of the GDPR since it went into effect in 2018 (after a 2-year grace period designed to give businesses time to get into compliance) and is in breach of it to this day. Is it even possible to be more non-compliant than that? At this point Meta has made so much profit from breaching the GDPR that even actually being hit with the max fine would still not offset what they earned breaching the regulation over the last 6 years since the max fine only considers revenue over the last year. The EU has repeatedly demonstrated it is incapable or unwilling to stand up to these companies and the companies know it, that's why Meta is still around doing business as usual, and Apple is messing around with malicious compliance and will keep doing so for the foreseeable future. That's why Microsoft is now back at anticompetitive shenanigans despite getting burnt previously - they (correctly) determined that whatever EU enforcement capability burned them before no longer exists.
dwaite 3y ago
The other way to look at it - China's regulators give Apple explicit instructions, vs Europe complaining that things weren't done in the 'spirit' of the request.
- talldayo 3y ago
  The Digital Market Act isn't a request, it's a law. Apple knows they aren't acting in the spirit of the law because they issued a press release about how bad it was for them and then re-tailored their transaction policy so it could continue to hamstring small businesses and open distribution. They are in conscious, open rebellion against the explicit demands of Europe's regulators; nobody would have invented a Core Technology Fee if this weren't true. From yet another perspective, all censorship is bad whether it's implicit or explicit. If Apple spends money fighting and lobbying against market protections while caving into surveillance demands abroad, it says a lot about the "spirit" in which they interpret legislation.
classified 3y ago
Maybe the EU should start arbitrarily arresting Apple execs.

EZ-E 3y ago

While I'm sure Apple worries about the safety of their executives - the main reason is probably they just want to keep the access to the Chinese market. As factories move away from China, the government has less and less reasons to let them eat their local mobile market share.

dkjaudyeqooe 3y ago
They want to keep access to the US and EU market as well, they just don't fear them in the same way.

traceroute66 3y ago

> That's because it doesn't want its executives in China to be disappeared, or denied an exit visa, or simply arrested arbitrarily. Well, to be fair, there are also other more practical factors at play ! 1. The sheer size of the market. Population of China is bigger than that of the US and the EU combined. 2. Although Apple are working on establishing manufacturing elsewhere, a large portion of their manufacturing still happens in China at the moment. I suspect, if you were in Apple's shoes, loosing (1), (2) or both is a far worse position to be in than one or two executives "disappearing". Executives "disappearing" is of course bad, but they are ultimately replaceable. Loosing the Chinese market or having constraints put on your manufacturing at short notice is a significantly bigger problem. Its the same reason Microsoft famously had no choice but to show the Chinese the Windows source code. I'm not defending China. I'm just saying, if you want to have business operations in a country (China or otherwise), you play by their rules. Being a large multi-national will only ultimately give you so much leeway with the authorities.

asimovfan 3y ago

The only reason is money and none of what you wrote.

Nextgrid 3y ago
Money is involved in the EU situation as well. It’s just that China has prior art of its swift enforcement of its rules and no tolerance for bad faith, while the EU has prior art of the opposite.
dkjaudyeqooe 3y ago
You don't think those happen? Wasn't really my point though.

initplus 3y ago

This isn’t a China specific thing. The story of Carlos Ghosn is a particularly worrying example out of Japan.

ffsm8 3y ago
The difference is that your example fled while most likely being guilty and mostly just wanted to evade prosecution, in China there is no need for any actual crime
- 2OEH8eoCRo0 3y ago
  https://travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/traveladvisories/traveladvisories/china-travel-advisory.html https://travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/traveladvisories/... > Reconsider travel to Mainland China due to the arbitrary enforcement of local laws, including in relation to exit bans, and the risk of wrongful detentions.
- initplus 3y ago
  He was held in solitary confinement for 108 days for a white collar non-violent first offence. Nobody should be subject to such conditions, for any offence. It is state sponsored torture. The Japanese justice system is dysfunctional, and it has prevented the case from being investigated fairly and appropriately. No justice system that's actually fair can have a 99.8% conviction rate at trial. It's a process designed to achieve convictions and punishment, not actually discover the truth.

Nextgrid 3y ago

I think it’s a combination of: 1) China has demonstrated plenty of times that it is not to be messed with, while EU, if anything (especially with GDPR) has demonstrated that you can keep breaking the rules and even a history of obvious bad faith is not a problem. 2) China has a successful domestic smartphone/tech industry that can (and does) compete with Apple. The EU doesn’t. It’s a much easier decision for China to kick out Apple than for the EU to do so. 3) I believe Apple also depends on China for manufacturing, so pissing them off could go beyond a national ban on sales and even affect production of international devices.

inamorty 3y ago
The EU is taking a more aggressive tack in recent years: * Amazon was fined $908 million in 2022. * Google was fined $113 million in the same year. * Instagram, owned by Meta was fined $506 million. Each of these fines would be drastically increased with further non-compliance
- rasz 3y ago
  Intel was fines over $1 Billion by EU in 2009 for paying off manufacturers/retailers to exclude AMD, hasnt paid a single dollar yet.
- Nextgrid 3y ago
  > Meta > Each of these fines would be drastically increased with further non-compliance Meta has a history of non-compliance, bad faith and obvious incentive to breach EU regulations given they are in direct opposition to their business model. It has been in breach of the GDPR since it went into effect in 2018 (after a 2-year grace period designed to give businesses time to get into compliance) and is in breach of it to this day. Is it even possible to be more non-compliant than that? At this point Meta has made so much profit from breaching the GDPR that even actually being hit with the max fine would still not offset what they earned breaching the regulation over the last 6 years since the max fine only considers revenue over the last year. The EU has repeatedly demonstrated it is incapable or unwilling to stand up to these companies and the companies know it, that's why Meta is still around doing business as usual, and Apple is messing around with malicious compliance and will keep doing so for the foreseeable future. That's why Microsoft is now back at anticompetitive shenanigans despite getting burnt previously - they (correctly) determined that whatever EU enforcement capability burned them before no longer exists.

dwaite 3y ago

The other way to look at it - China's regulators give Apple explicit instructions, vs Europe complaining that things weren't done in the 'spirit' of the request.

talldayo 3y ago
The Digital Market Act isn't a request, it's a law. Apple knows they aren't acting in the spirit of the law because they issued a press release about how bad it was for them and then re-tailored their transaction policy so it could continue to hamstring small businesses and open distribution. They are in conscious, open rebellion against the explicit demands of Europe's regulators; nobody would have invented a Core Technology Fee if this weren't true. From yet another perspective, all censorship is bad whether it's implicit or explicit. If Apple spends money fighting and lobbying against market protections while caving into surveillance demands abroad, it says a lot about the "spirit" in which they interpret legislation.

classified 3y ago

Maybe the EU should start arbitrarily arresting Apple execs.