7 ms·

Is Beijing beginning a campaign against Apple?

68 points by iProject 14y ago

phoboslab 14y ago
War? Like with machine guns, drones and tanks? I didn't realize Apple has those. In all seriousness: why is every little disagreement labeled as "war" by the US media? Does it just make "good" headlines?
- pdelbarba 14y ago
  I'm interested to see what happens next with Google. They're the ones with the androids after all. It just makes for a good headline. Look at the military spending figures and I think a pattern will emerge...
- jacques_chester 14y ago
  Yes. It's being upvoted and thus draws traffic. That's all that matters.
- mistercow 14y ago
  It's just a metaphor, and I think a reasonably apt one in this case. Were you genuinely confused that China might be initiating military operations against Apple when you read the headline? In any case, calling it a "little disagreement" when a government launches a propaganda campaign against a company seems pretty disingenuous.
  - roc 14y ago
    If Apple actually was using the practices listed: refurb parts, lower warranty coverage, etc. is it really a propaganda campaign? [1] Even evidence of a TV Show paying a celebrity to juice impact of their story is hardly evidence of government involvement. The only evidence I see of government influence is in the outrage against usury being directed at the makers of aspirational products, rather than the predatory lenders. If the bank essentially is the government... you can't really bark up that tree directly. But, again, they dont' seem to have been fabricating charges against Apple. [1] That said, I understand Apple's bind; they need lower costs and lower prices for China. So they have to do something. But it certainly sounds like they took a brand-damaging anti-user approach. (And Apple didn't seem to deny any of it.)
    - Retric 14y ago
      That may have a lot to do with sellers skimming vs. actual refurb parts in the supply chain. Granted consumers don't care, but forgery is really common over there because so many people have access to the type of factory's that produce all that stuff in the first place.
    - AnthonyMouse 14y ago
      >If Apple actually was using the practices listed: refurb parts, lower warranty coverage, etc. is it really a propaganda campaign? Most certainly. Selection bias is bias. The media is never going to cover every fact about a company, and there are different facts that will portray anyone in a different light. See: If-by-whiskey.[1] And if you're worried about affecting their image instead of the speaker's, you pick one side and silence the other. If you decide you like someone, you report only the positive facts about them and viewers like them too. If you decide you don't like them you report only the negative facts and viewers don't like them either. You can do this without telling a single lie, and it's enormously effective because no one can disprove anything you report since it's all true, it's just intentionally incomplete. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/If-by-whiskey http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/If-by-whiskey
    - mistercow 14y ago
      >If Apple actually was using the practices listed: refurb parts, lower warranty coverage, etc. is it really a propaganda campaign Yes. "Propaganda" simply means the dissemination of information (true or not) with motivation other than simply helping people to be informed. If the information is being put out in order to hurt Apple's reputation, it's propaganda. And that's generally not much to worry about if it comes from activist groups, corporations, and other sources with transparent biases, but when it's coming from a government (or government controlled media, which equates to the same thing), it's a different situation - especially in a climate where dissenting opinions are quashed. >Even evidence of a TV Show paying a celebrity to juice impact of their story is hardly evidence of government involvement. Except that the Chinese government has tremendous control over the media in China. Add to that the censorship of thousands of whatever Weibo calls "tweets", and it seems pretty obvious that government shenanigans are at work. >The only evidence I see of government influence is in the outrage against usury being directed at the makers of aspirational products, rather than the predatory lenders. That's the only evidence you can see? I would point out all of the other pieces of evidence in the article, but I feel like I'd be just copying and pasting large chunks of it into my comment. Maybe you should just reread it?
  - phoboslab 14y ago
    I think that the word "War" deserves a little more respect. With this inflationary use it has completely lost its original meaning. It has become so harmless that you can drop it in almost every headline. Try this: when a girl you don't find attractive asks you out, joke with your colleagues afterwards that "she totally raped you". This makes "Rape" sound casual, which it absolutely shouldn't. Neither should "War" sound casual. I guess what we need is a new word that really means "fighting with machine guns and tanks while lots of mothers grieve over their dead children".
    - Evbn 14y ago
      The rape analogy fails because declining a date is completely non aggressive. OTOH, people claim "rape" each other all the time in trivial activities like video games.
- JonnieCache 14y ago
  America is seemingly unable to conceptualise the work of government in a positive sense except in terms of industrialised mass-murder. See the war on drugs, the war on obesity, the war on women, the war on christmas, the war on cancer etc.
- RexRollman 14y ago
  War doesn't just mean armed conflict. From dictionary.com: "active hostility or contention; conflict; contest: a war of words."
drchiu 14y ago
Just an opinion, but I don't think Beijing will be too successful in attacking Apple. Chinese people don't look at all foreign brands the same. Sure, Yum foods can be attacked and that can hurt their sales. But don't forget Yum sells a cheap product as well eg. KFC, Taco Bell. Audi, Mercedes, Apple... these are all premium brands Chinese people love. If you have money (or aspire to look like one who does), buying a Chinese brand just makes you look ordinary in a place where every corner is selling some Chinese-alternative lookalike. Disclaimer - I'm Chinese, but raised in America.
- polymatter 14y ago
  I was surprised that a lot of Chinese I met equated Chinese brands with poor quality more strongly than Europeans, and given the choice would always buy foreign even if they don't recognise the brand. Surprised, because they were also strongly nationalistic in all other respects. But China needs to move up the value chain and I suspect this is a general campaign to get Chinese consumers buying from domestic brands. Disclaimer - not Chinese and the Chinese I met were obviously the more well off Beijingers.
  - neolefty 14y ago
    In China, Yum's KFC is a luxury brand, according to my Chinese friends. It is more expensive and higher quality than its Chinese competitors. I know that's hard to believe from the vantage point of the U.S., where KFC and Taco Bell are pretty low on the food quality scale.
    - Evbn 14y ago
      In the US, sushi is a premium product, whereas in Japan it is a basic bar staple. Imported culture adds cachet.
  - barry-cotter 14y ago
    If you'd ever bought a Lenovo product in China you'd swear off non-Taiwanese Chinese electronics. I'm sure in 20 years there'll be well established, large, quality brands but it's awful now.
OGinparadise 14y ago
Google barely exists in China. Facebook doesn't exist at all. Android in on notice http://www.cnbc.com/id/100521504 http://www.cnbc.com/id/100521504 So is Apple. Microsoft seems safe, so far, and until they (or if they) clone Windows. Rules, international agreements and fairness aside: It all makes sense. Why would China want their people spend a month's salary to buy a foreign product (assembly doesn't count)? Or why would the most popular sites be non-Chinese? Block the non-Chinese ones and local ones, totally controlled by China's gov, would pop up. If they could get away with it, a lot of other countries would do the same, they just don't have the 1.x billion people, trillions in Forex and audacity to try it.
- coldtea 14y ago
  >Why would China want their people spend a month's salary to buy a foreign product (assembly doesn't count)? Or why would the most popular sites be non-Chinese? Block the non-Chinese ones and local ones, totally controlled by China's gov, would pop up. If they could get away with it, a lot of other countries would do the same, they just don't have the 1.x billion people, trillions in Forex and audacity to try it. Indeed, it makes sense. Americans often take offense to this logic, but then again, almost all the "public internet" we use is American. From the domain registries, to Google, Facebook, Apple, MS, Yahoo, Amazon, etc. So it's easy for them to play the tolerant, and allow for the occasional foreign success story. But they would be singing a totally different tune if the most popular sites and services were to be, say, British. Much more if they were Chinese, German, etc. They would be all over for protectionism and enforcing their local alternatives if that happened. It's easy to ask for "openness" if it just means others opening to YOUR stuff (and getting a trade deficit to use it, give your government information control over their citizens, and get washed in a US point-of-view --political, historical, cultural etc). As far as being culturally closed, the US is at the top of the list. Just an example: even in Mongolia, people watch American movies. How many foreign, non anglophone, movies make it into the US theaters? Even in France people listen to American music (as well as music from all over the world). How many non-American (and non anglophone, e.g British) bands ever make into the top 10? It pretty much only happens with two things: novelties and anime (which are comics and animation, so not that far from the respective american forms anyway, and of course cross-breed with them).
seanmcdirmid 14y ago
Attacking apple is just a way of dealing with their own inadequacies. Apple products have just become way too popular here, making apple a nice juicy target. The people will ignore the uncredible cctv and keep buying iPhones.
youngerdryas 14y ago
>“Post around 8:20”? Ho had goofed. The movie star uploaded not only his sharply critical posting at 8:26 P.M., but he also posted the instructions he received from some other party. He is a Samsung Galaxy spokesman, but no one is fingering the Korean brand as the culprit. So who told Ho to post “around 8:20”? For China’s noisy netizens, there was only one suspect: CCTV. Weibo users immediately pounced, noting that there were other anti-Apple postings around that time. By 8:45 P.M. comments criticizing the inattentive Mr. Ho were overwhelming the anti-Apple postings. Ho, at 10:08 P.M., deleted his original posting and then denied he authored the attack on Apple, claiming that someone had “hacked” his Weibo account. Just about nobody believed the denial. Users began posting acerbic comments with the #PostAround8:20 hashtag. Weibo censors later deleted tens of thousands of postings with that hashtag. Surreal.
- axusgrad 14y ago
  Maybe CCTV came up with the idea on their own, to sell a story. I wonder what the process for getting government approval is like for them? Is there a government office that takes applications for public propaganda campaigns? Do they just call Hu Jintao's cell phone?
- Evbn 14y ago
  Consider: if a movie star is a puppet of the government, and he posts statements that they demand, or if he is coerced into sharing his password, that is effectively the same as being hacked, via social engineering / state force.
- anywhichway 14y ago
  Seems to me that it is more likely that Samsung, who he is an official spokesman for, told him to post that as part of his duties as spokesman. Also it seems more likely that Samsung is behind the CCTV campaign as they are the ones that would gain from such a message, so I'm not sure why people are putting it on CCTV as the orchestrator. In my opinion the worst violation of this story is the weibo censorship following the incident.
felxh 14y ago
Similar story in the German news the last few days. Looks like Audi, BMW and Daimler are being 'attacked' as well. They are being accused of using materials that produce poisonous fumes in their interiors.
niggler 14y ago
Forbes.com = sensationalist drivel Why are these posts continually upvoted?
zht 14y ago
As a bit of an aside, Gordon Chang is a frequent commentator on China-related topics. He famously speculated in a book that he wrote in 2001[1] that China would collapse in 2006 due to hidden and non-performing loans of the state banks. [1] http://www.amazon.com/Coming-Collapse-China-Gordon-Chang/dp/0812977564 http://www.amazon.com/Coming-Collapse-China-Gordon-Chang/dp/...
- kyllo 14y ago
  I think he was only wrong about the "when" and not the "if" of that one. China is in an out-of-control real estate bubble that when it pops, will likely lead to open revolt.
vorg 14y ago
This article opens "On Friday, Chinese state media reported that, from January of last year to the end of last month, more than 20,000 college students in the central city of Wuhan applied for 160 million yuan of “high-interest rate loans” from Home Credit China." 20,000 sounds high but is only 2% of Wuhan's tertiary student population, the city with the most tertiary students in all of China. According to http://europe.chinadaily.com.cn/epaper/2011-04/29/content_12420906_3.htm http://europe.chinadaily.com.cn/epaper/2011-04/29/content_12... "The total number of university students in Wuhan has surpassed Beijing and Shanghai since 2008. Up to 1.06 million people in Wuhan's 10 million population are in universities and various labs and research centers."
pootch 14y ago
China couldnt declare war on my left nut. China is my bitch.
squozzer 14y ago
China didn't invent company-bashing propaganda disguised as "news", that honor probably belongs to the US. Exhibit A - Ida Tarbell v. John Rockefeller, The History of the Standard Oil Company. Exhibit B - Anderson Cooper v. Craigslist.
- seanmcdirmid 14y ago
  The article is not about the usa, wumao.
nrser 14y ago
i live in Beijing. word is that CCTV uses the 3.15 expose to exert influence on advertisers. Apple had been moving too much of it's ad dollars off CCTV and onto provincial stations. it's a "we'd hate to see your company on 3.15 next year" sort of thing. guess Apple didn't listen.

68 points by iProject 14y ago

War? Like with machine guns, drones and tanks? I didn't realize Apple has those. In all seriousness: why is every little disagreement labeled as "war" by the US media? Does it just make "good" headlines?

pdelbarba 14y ago
I'm interested to see what happens next with Google. They're the ones with the androids after all. It just makes for a good headline. Look at the military spending figures and I think a pattern will emerge...
jacques_chester 14y ago
Yes. It's being upvoted and thus draws traffic. That's all that matters.
mistercow 14y ago
It's just a metaphor, and I think a reasonably apt one in this case. Were you genuinely confused that China might be initiating military operations against Apple when you read the headline? In any case, calling it a "little disagreement" when a government launches a propaganda campaign against a company seems pretty disingenuous.
- roc 14y ago
  If Apple actually was using the practices listed: refurb parts, lower warranty coverage, etc. is it really a propaganda campaign? [1] Even evidence of a TV Show paying a celebrity to juice impact of their story is hardly evidence of government involvement. The only evidence I see of government influence is in the outrage against usury being directed at the makers of aspirational products, rather than the predatory lenders. If the bank essentially is the government... you can't really bark up that tree directly. But, again, they dont' seem to have been fabricating charges against Apple. [1] That said, I understand Apple's bind; they need lower costs and lower prices for China. So they have to do something. But it certainly sounds like they took a brand-damaging anti-user approach. (And Apple didn't seem to deny any of it.)
  - Retric 14y ago
    That may have a lot to do with sellers skimming vs. actual refurb parts in the supply chain. Granted consumers don't care, but forgery is really common over there because so many people have access to the type of factory's that produce all that stuff in the first place.
  - AnthonyMouse 14y ago
    >If Apple actually was using the practices listed: refurb parts, lower warranty coverage, etc. is it really a propaganda campaign? Most certainly. Selection bias is bias. The media is never going to cover every fact about a company, and there are different facts that will portray anyone in a different light. See: If-by-whiskey.[1] And if you're worried about affecting their image instead of the speaker's, you pick one side and silence the other. If you decide you like someone, you report only the positive facts about them and viewers like them too. If you decide you don't like them you report only the negative facts and viewers don't like them either. You can do this without telling a single lie, and it's enormously effective because no one can disprove anything you report since it's all true, it's just intentionally incomplete. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/If-by-whiskey http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/If-by-whiskey
  - mistercow 14y ago
    >If Apple actually was using the practices listed: refurb parts, lower warranty coverage, etc. is it really a propaganda campaign Yes. "Propaganda" simply means the dissemination of information (true or not) with motivation other than simply helping people to be informed. If the information is being put out in order to hurt Apple's reputation, it's propaganda. And that's generally not much to worry about if it comes from activist groups, corporations, and other sources with transparent biases, but when it's coming from a government (or government controlled media, which equates to the same thing), it's a different situation - especially in a climate where dissenting opinions are quashed. >Even evidence of a TV Show paying a celebrity to juice impact of their story is hardly evidence of government involvement. Except that the Chinese government has tremendous control over the media in China. Add to that the censorship of thousands of whatever Weibo calls "tweets", and it seems pretty obvious that government shenanigans are at work. >The only evidence I see of government influence is in the outrage against usury being directed at the makers of aspirational products, rather than the predatory lenders. That's the only evidence you can see? I would point out all of the other pieces of evidence in the article, but I feel like I'd be just copying and pasting large chunks of it into my comment. Maybe you should just reread it?
- phoboslab 14y ago
  I think that the word "War" deserves a little more respect. With this inflationary use it has completely lost its original meaning. It has become so harmless that you can drop it in almost every headline. Try this: when a girl you don't find attractive asks you out, joke with your colleagues afterwards that "she totally raped you". This makes "Rape" sound casual, which it absolutely shouldn't. Neither should "War" sound casual. I guess what we need is a new word that really means "fighting with machine guns and tanks while lots of mothers grieve over their dead children".
  - Evbn 14y ago
    The rape analogy fails because declining a date is completely non aggressive. OTOH, people claim "rape" each other all the time in trivial activities like video games.
JonnieCache 14y ago
America is seemingly unable to conceptualise the work of government in a positive sense except in terms of industrialised mass-murder. See the war on drugs, the war on obesity, the war on women, the war on christmas, the war on cancer etc.
RexRollman 14y ago
War doesn't just mean armed conflict. From dictionary.com: "active hostility or contention; conflict; contest: a war of words."

drchiu 14y ago

Just an opinion, but I don't think Beijing will be too successful in attacking Apple. Chinese people don't look at all foreign brands the same. Sure, Yum foods can be attacked and that can hurt their sales. But don't forget Yum sells a cheap product as well eg. KFC, Taco Bell. Audi, Mercedes, Apple... these are all premium brands Chinese people love. If you have money (or aspire to look like one who does), buying a Chinese brand just makes you look ordinary in a place where every corner is selling some Chinese-alternative lookalike. Disclaimer - I'm Chinese, but raised in America.

polymatter 14y ago
I was surprised that a lot of Chinese I met equated Chinese brands with poor quality more strongly than Europeans, and given the choice would always buy foreign even if they don't recognise the brand. Surprised, because they were also strongly nationalistic in all other respects. But China needs to move up the value chain and I suspect this is a general campaign to get Chinese consumers buying from domestic brands. Disclaimer - not Chinese and the Chinese I met were obviously the more well off Beijingers.
- neolefty 14y ago
  In China, Yum's KFC is a luxury brand, according to my Chinese friends. It is more expensive and higher quality than its Chinese competitors. I know that's hard to believe from the vantage point of the U.S., where KFC and Taco Bell are pretty low on the food quality scale.
  - Evbn 14y ago
    In the US, sushi is a premium product, whereas in Japan it is a basic bar staple. Imported culture adds cachet.
- barry-cotter 14y ago
  If you'd ever bought a Lenovo product in China you'd swear off non-Taiwanese Chinese electronics. I'm sure in 20 years there'll be well established, large, quality brands but it's awful now.

OGinparadise 14y ago

Google barely exists in China. Facebook doesn't exist at all. Android in on notice http://www.cnbc.com/id/100521504 http://www.cnbc.com/id/100521504 So is Apple. Microsoft seems safe, so far, and until they (or if they) clone Windows. Rules, international agreements and fairness aside: It all makes sense. Why would China want their people spend a month's salary to buy a foreign product (assembly doesn't count)? Or why would the most popular sites be non-Chinese? Block the non-Chinese ones and local ones, totally controlled by China's gov, would pop up. If they could get away with it, a lot of other countries would do the same, they just don't have the 1.x billion people, trillions in Forex and audacity to try it.

coldtea 14y ago
>Why would China want their people spend a month's salary to buy a foreign product (assembly doesn't count)? Or why would the most popular sites be non-Chinese? Block the non-Chinese ones and local ones, totally controlled by China's gov, would pop up. If they could get away with it, a lot of other countries would do the same, they just don't have the 1.x billion people, trillions in Forex and audacity to try it. Indeed, it makes sense. Americans often take offense to this logic, but then again, almost all the "public internet" we use is American. From the domain registries, to Google, Facebook, Apple, MS, Yahoo, Amazon, etc. So it's easy for them to play the tolerant, and allow for the occasional foreign success story. But they would be singing a totally different tune if the most popular sites and services were to be, say, British. Much more if they were Chinese, German, etc. They would be all over for protectionism and enforcing their local alternatives if that happened. It's easy to ask for "openness" if it just means others opening to YOUR stuff (and getting a trade deficit to use it, give your government information control over their citizens, and get washed in a US point-of-view --political, historical, cultural etc). As far as being culturally closed, the US is at the top of the list. Just an example: even in Mongolia, people watch American movies. How many foreign, non anglophone, movies make it into the US theaters? Even in France people listen to American music (as well as music from all over the world). How many non-American (and non anglophone, e.g British) bands ever make into the top 10? It pretty much only happens with two things: novelties and anime (which are comics and animation, so not that far from the respective american forms anyway, and of course cross-breed with them).

seanmcdirmid 14y ago

Attacking apple is just a way of dealing with their own inadequacies. Apple products have just become way too popular here, making apple a nice juicy target. The people will ignore the uncredible cctv and keep buying iPhones.

youngerdryas 14y ago

>“Post around 8:20”? Ho had goofed. The movie star uploaded not only his sharply critical posting at 8:26 P.M., but he also posted the instructions he received from some other party. He is a Samsung Galaxy spokesman, but no one is fingering the Korean brand as the culprit. So who told Ho to post “around 8:20”? For China’s noisy netizens, there was only one suspect: CCTV. Weibo users immediately pounced, noting that there were other anti-Apple postings around that time. By 8:45 P.M. comments criticizing the inattentive Mr. Ho were overwhelming the anti-Apple postings. Ho, at 10:08 P.M., deleted his original posting and then denied he authored the attack on Apple, claiming that someone had “hacked” his Weibo account. Just about nobody believed the denial. Users began posting acerbic comments with the #PostAround8:20 hashtag. Weibo censors later deleted tens of thousands of postings with that hashtag. Surreal.

axusgrad 14y ago
Maybe CCTV came up with the idea on their own, to sell a story. I wonder what the process for getting government approval is like for them? Is there a government office that takes applications for public propaganda campaigns? Do they just call Hu Jintao's cell phone?
Evbn 14y ago
Consider: if a movie star is a puppet of the government, and he posts statements that they demand, or if he is coerced into sharing his password, that is effectively the same as being hacked, via social engineering / state force.
anywhichway 14y ago
Seems to me that it is more likely that Samsung, who he is an official spokesman for, told him to post that as part of his duties as spokesman. Also it seems more likely that Samsung is behind the CCTV campaign as they are the ones that would gain from such a message, so I'm not sure why people are putting it on CCTV as the orchestrator. In my opinion the worst violation of this story is the weibo censorship following the incident.

felxh 14y ago

Similar story in the German news the last few days. Looks like Audi, BMW and Daimler are being 'attacked' as well. They are being accused of using materials that produce poisonous fumes in their interiors.

niggler 14y ago

Forbes.com = sensationalist drivel Why are these posts continually upvoted?

zht 14y ago

As a bit of an aside, Gordon Chang is a frequent commentator on China-related topics. He famously speculated in a book that he wrote in 2001[1] that China would collapse in 2006 due to hidden and non-performing loans of the state banks. [1] http://www.amazon.com/Coming-Collapse-China-Gordon-Chang/dp/0812977564 http://www.amazon.com/Coming-Collapse-China-Gordon-Chang/dp/...

kyllo 14y ago
I think he was only wrong about the "when" and not the "if" of that one. China is in an out-of-control real estate bubble that when it pops, will likely lead to open revolt.

vorg 14y ago

This article opens "On Friday, Chinese state media reported that, from January of last year to the end of last month, more than 20,000 college students in the central city of Wuhan applied for 160 million yuan of “high-interest rate loans” from Home Credit China." 20,000 sounds high but is only 2% of Wuhan's tertiary student population, the city with the most tertiary students in all of China. According to http://europe.chinadaily.com.cn/epaper/2011-04/29/content_12420906_3.htm http://europe.chinadaily.com.cn/epaper/2011-04/29/content_12... "The total number of university students in Wuhan has surpassed Beijing and Shanghai since 2008. Up to 1.06 million people in Wuhan's 10 million population are in universities and various labs and research centers."

pootch 14y ago

China couldnt declare war on my left nut. China is my bitch.

squozzer 14y ago

China didn't invent company-bashing propaganda disguised as "news", that honor probably belongs to the US. Exhibit A - Ida Tarbell v. John Rockefeller, The History of the Standard Oil Company. Exhibit B - Anderson Cooper v. Craigslist.

seanmcdirmid 14y ago
The article is not about the usa, wumao.

nrser 14y ago

i live in Beijing. word is that CCTV uses the 3.15 expose to exert influence on advertisers. Apple had been moving too much of it's ad dollars off CCTV and onto provincial stations. it's a "we'd hate to see your company on 3.15 next year" sort of thing. guess Apple didn't listen.