Description

By (author) McGee Patrick

Short /annotation:

For readers of Walter Isaacson’s Steve Jobs and Chris Miller’s Chip War, a riveting look at how Apple helped build China’s dominance in electronics assembly and manufacturing only to find itself trapped in a relationship with an authoritarian state making ever-increasing demands.

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*** THE NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER ***

‘Absolutely riveting’ Peter Frankopan, author of The Silk Roads

‘Disturbing and enlightening’ Chris Miller, author of Chip War

‘Hugely important’ Rana Foroohar, author of Makers and Takers

‘A once-in-a-generation read’ Robert D. Kaplan, author of Waste Land

As Trump wages a tariff war with China, seeking to boost domestic electronics manufacturing, this book offers an unparalleled insight into why his strategy is embarrassingly naïve.

Apple isn’t just a brand; it’s the world’s most valuable company and creator of the 21st century’s defining product. The iPhone has revolutionized the way we live, work and connect. But Apple is now a victim of its own success, caught in the middle of a new Cold War between two superpowers.

On the brink of bankruptcy in 1996, Apple adopted an outsourcing strategy. By 2003 it was lured to China by the promise of affordable, ubiquitous labour. As the iPod and iPhone transformed Apple’s fortunes, their sophisticated production played a seminal role in financing, training, supervising and supplying Chinese manufacturers – skills Beijing is now weaponizing against the West.

Investigative journalist Patrick McGee draws on 200 interviews with former Apple executives and engineers to reveal how Cupertino’s choice to anchor its supply chain in China has increasingly made it vulnerable to the regime’s whims. Both an insider’s historical account and a cautionary tale, Apple in China is the first history of Apple to go beyond the biographies of its top executives and set the iPhone’s global domination within an increasingly fraught geopolitical context.

Review quote:
”This is
the best book about Apple ever written, one of the
best books about China ever written, and one of the
best books about tech, period”

Review quote:
‘As Patrick McGee makes devastatingly clear in his
smart and comprehensive Apple in China, the American company’s decision under Tim Cook, the current C.E.O., to manufacture about 90 percent of its products in China has created an
existential vulnerability not just for Apple, but for the United States – nurturing the conditions for Chinese technology to outpace American innovation . . .
[a] persuasive exposé of the trillion-dollar company’s uncomfortably close relationship with the global power . . . what began as a feat of manufacturing has troubling consequences for the entire world’

Review quote:
‘
An eye-opening exposé . . .
Apple is notoriously secretive, but McGee proffers dozens of first-hand accounts of how the company essentially bumbled its way into becoming hooked on China . . . As an insight into how this odd couple became so entwined – in Apple’s manufacturing and engineering processes, design secrets, business partnerships and a large chunk of its sales –
Apple in China is astonishing. Let’s hope for Apple’s sake that Donald Trump doesn’t read this book’

Review quote:
‘
Explains how Apple became inseparable from China and what the fracturing of global trade means for one of the world’s most valuable companies . . . Mr McGee excels at describing the intricacies of supply chains . . . his
timely book poses a question for investors and policymakers alike: can the company thrive without China? If the answer is no, then a failure