Sounds like a company tailoring its products to its market. This has happened forever, its just that the U.S market is no longer the biggest or most important one.
We don't have to treat them as a force of nature.
any petty despot enjoys the same level of power
The companies in question had a massive technological and force advantage over the local populace with free reign when it came to managing dissent with force. Their only political concerns were back in Europe.
Some argue that some live in borderline corporatocracies now, but the 17th century was a completely different ball game.
It's said Pablo Escobar didn't need to arrange those escapes from prison: he didn't have to ask. It was done for him because he would be grateful to his benefactors.
Accomadating, implicitly or explicitly, the Chinese government is not respecting or listening to a market because the Chinese government is not a market. This is a different kind of relationship to "people who buy iPhones" or "Canadians".
In the past, you would get parts of a movie, titles, jokes or whatever censored in some part of the world, and not elsewhere.
Now to avoid upsetting the CCP companies decide to not use potentially offensive content all over the world.
It's terrifying.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_largest_consumer_mar...
They already'captured' so much of the us market that catering to it has sever denimishing returns. Most people already in the ecosystem will keep buying it no matter what Apple does.
I'm China, they stand to gain a lot of new customers by catering to their wishes (or more specifically the wishes of their government)
Good luck sourcing chips for future military systems.
There's still comparatively little high-tech silicon fabrication in mainland China.
Apple and the Americans that work for it would be so much richer if the majority of its revenue (international vs US) just disappeared.