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Comment by mauvehaus | Hacker News Reader

This from the company that removed the headphone jack from their phones while crowing about the "courage" involved in making the decision.

I'm not going to pretend to believe that Tim Cook's letter (cited elsewhere) was much more than a PR move in a country they were unlikely to face any substantial consequences for (at least publicly) standing up to the government, or that I really believe that corporations have a responsibility to protect basic human rights (though it would be nice if they did). Still, it'd be nice if corporations didn't try to have it both ways and maintain an image as a courageous force for good when it was convenient while washing their hands of responsibility for any actual action when it became difficult.

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Aren't they forced to follow Chinese laws when doing business there? Not saying what they did is moral but it seems the moral question here is whether they be doing business in China, not whether they should be following the laws while doing business their because they don't really have a choice once they decide to do business there. Google for example doesn't do business there so they don't have to respect censorship laws.

There is no such thing as "once they decide". Once you notice that what you are doing is immoral, you have to revise previous decisions.

Also, it's not that cut and dry: If your product actually contributes to the wealth of the country, they cannot just ban you without hurting themselves. Just because they legally can, does not mean you don't have any leverage.

Could Apple really ever decide to not do any business in China - could they extract their phone/computer business without affecting their manufacturing business?

Without access to Shenzhen and Foxconn, it seems like it would be a literal corporate suicide.

Well, I don't know--but given that Foxconn is apparently planning to open a factory in the US, I would suspect it shouldn't be all that impossible?

Also, do you think that China doesn't care about unemployment and exports? I mean, Foxconn is not a charity, they are effectively an exporter of a part of the value of Apple products, and they employ people building Apple products, if they kick out Apple, that money will most likely go elsewhere and employ people elsewhere.

The unemployment from Foxconn's closure wouldn't really make a dent, and would go away pretty quickly. Opening up access to information would be hard to reverse later without facing the same argument with Apple as before. The only reasonable solution is to not yield to Apple.

Hu? How exactly would the lack of export of the work of half a million people "go away pretty quickly"?

Also, noone is talking about opening up anything, just keeping the access that already exists, which they are obviously trying to "reverse" right now, apparently successfully ... and you are saying that cannot actually be done?

I am not sure I can follow your argument?

How many of Apple's devices are manufactured in China? The Chinese Government could completely cripple Apple in a second. It really isn't Apple that has the leverage.

Censorship is fundamental to Chinese government policy. It's totally non-negotiable. You either do as they say, or you don't operate in China. No negotiation, no compromise. Given the manufacturing situation China has Apple by the short and curlies, and Cooke knows it.

So, you think china doesn't care about unemployment?

Also, there is no such thing as "non-negotiable". Everything is negotiable, if you are able to offer something of enough value in exchange.

If you think Apple has anything valuable enough for China to abandon its principle means of social and political control, I think you're sadly mistaken.

Yet somehow Google manages to make phones and not cooperate with China.

By outsourcing manufacturing to HTC, LG, and Motorola...

Google also doesn't violate Chinese censorship or data disclosure laws, which apparently is what it's being suggested that Apple do.

Of course Google do this by not operating in China at all any more. But what is being suggested is that Apple at least threaten to violate Chinese law or attempt to apply pressure to the Chinese government. Even Google didn't try that when they did operate in China, because frankly they're not insane and they had employees in China, and presumably didn't want any of those employees gracing the hospitality of the Chinese police force.

Fyi, Google does do business in China. They have offices in Beijing and Shanghai at least. Their phones are most probably also manifactured in China which is pretty big business.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_China

> unlikely to face any substantial consequences for (at least publicly) standing up to the government

Well, they could take a market hit if customers find out they've been acting contrary to their words.

The percentage of iPhone/Mac users that care enough about VPN in China to switch to Android/Windows wouldn't even be a rounding error.

But apparently there are enough people who care about privacy for Apple to market to them, and they could lose those as customers if it turns out that marketing consisted of empty words.

Apple follows the law while sending lawyers to do the work necessary to block censorship.

How do the law work in China? Is it even possible to block censorship?

A misconception about China is rule-of–law.

I bought my first iPhone this year. No headphone jack but the phone included very nice earphones than use the thunderbolt charging port.

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