How Apple Made Modern China
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If I told you that Apple has invested around US$55 billion every year in China since 2016 would you be able to grasp the enormity of that sized investment? Comparisons include the Marshall Plan after WW2, scaled up to into today’s money, which was the US investing in Europe to rebuild it after the destruction of nearly a decade of war. The Apple investment in China is twice this on an equivalent dollar scale. This is how Apple made modern China.
“The Marshall Plan was a U.S.-sponsored program designed to rehabilitate the economies of 17 western and southern European countries in order to create stable conditions in which democratic institutions could survive in the aftermath of World War II. It was formally called the European Recovery Program. “
The Apple investment has paid for the super factories producing iPhones and the supply chain assembled by Apple has driven the electronic modernisation of China. Chinese competitors have been trained by Apple and created a burgeoning state of the art electronics economy. Apple let the genie out of the bottle and there is no putting that thing back.
Apple In China
Apple In China by Patrick McGee is the new book lifting the lid on the extraordinary remaking of the world order courtesy of neoliberalism and the multinational shareholder centric drivers of modern capitalism. While dumb Americans were so caught up in accruing extreme wealth their intellectual property was being sliced and diced in China to produce a competitor which has so far outpaced it in manufacturing that it is game over. Trump’s tariffs will never recapture American dominance it is pissing in the wind when that wind is blowing it back all over you.
“Cook was in Beijing that day to do the opposite: to impress upon President Xi Jinping’s government that Apple was so committed to China that it planned to spend $275 billion in the country over the next five years. “I call it a Marshall Plan for China, because I could not find any corporate spending coming close to what Apple was spending,” said Financial Times journalist Patrick McGee, who writes about this and other moments illustrating Apple’s role in enabling China’s rise in his new book Apple in China: The Capture of the World’s Greatest Company.”
If nationalistic fervour really carried any weight in the business world this would have to be the greatest own goal of all time. In reality, however it doesn’t no matter what some may bang on about in certain sections of the media. Globalisation left that kind of thinking behind decades ago. Now, with the Trump 2.0 trade war unleashed this stuff will have treasonous connotations but you are not supposed to be able to make laws and stuff retrospective. Tariffs with no industrial plan will not bring back manufacturing to the US.
“You know, watching the Donald Trump circus in America is pretty amazing. What did a commentator say recently, ‘hire a bunch of clowns and you get a circus,’ It is like someone has gone around and purposely brought together the dumbest bunch of people to run the country. It is the complete reversal of centuries of collective intention to attract the best experts in their fields for this national purpose. “
Apple Invested In China Big Time
Getting back to the immense size of the investment Apple has made in China it is simply stunning that few folk were aware of what was going on and its ramifications for the geopolitical world order. Think about that $275 billion investment occurring in any other country and what it could mean for it and its population. This is the direct consequence of the neoliberal emphasis on shrinking government and putting shareholders first and foremost. A lack of oversight results through the tunnel vision of one corporation’s profits and ROI. America has had its intellectual property sold short to funnel profits into the hands of the super wealthy. The nation has been diddled when you think about its role in educating these tech engineers at their universities. It is a disgraceful indictment on the greed is good generations of Republicans and Democrats in power. Low taxing governments syphoning off the benefits of New Deal infrastructure and seeing into the pockets of billionaires and oligarchs. This is how Apple made modern China.
America’s Lack Of A Plan
All these frustrated Trumpian MAGA Americans banging on about the unfortunate rise of China and their stock exchange darling, Apple, funded it directly. Apple trained the engineers and built the factories and supply chains. These have gone on to transform and conquer the EV market. The tech savviness learned from Apple has, also, gone into making state of the art electronic weapons to fill the arsenals of the PLA. China had a plan, whilst the US was limited to individual companies going after their own wealth goals. Investors are not king or they should not be anyway. America could be defined as ‘a bunch of individuals lacking a cohesive plan.’ Greed and self-interest aint going to cut it when up against a well planned community. What America and other Western democracies actually need is better government, more better government and not less.
Robert Sudha Hamilton is the author of America Matters: Pre-apocalyptic Posts & Essays in the Shadow of Trump
& Money Matters.
©MidasWord
