Apple aids and abets Big Brother in China

Lack of transparency in pulling New York Times app adds to Orwellian nature of move 
By Tom Mitchell in Beijing

Most people old enough to have watched the 1984 Super Bowl will not remember the two American football teams that played in it.
They will probably remember “The Commercial”.
In the annals of the NFL playoffs, it is almost as famous as “The Catch” — an improbable end zone grab by the San Francisco 49ers’ Dwight Clark in the 1982 NFC Championship game.
During a break in the third quarter of Super Bowl XVIII, as the Los Angeles Raiders were running up the score on the Washington Redskins, CBS broadcast an Apple advertisement for its new Macintosh computer.
Directed by Ridley Scott, the 60-second spot featured an athlete hurling a sledgehammer into a giant screen on which Big Brother was hypnotising the masses.
The screen explodes, symbolising Apple’s assault on what it regarded as the bland conformity of the emerging personal computer industry. 
Titled “1984” in honour of George Orwell’s novel of the same name, it is today regarded as one of the best television commercials of all time.
It is also sadly ironic in light of recent events in China, where Apple has decided to aid and abet Big Brother. 
Last week, Apple confirmed it had pulled the New York Times app from its online store in China, where the newspaper’s website has been blocked by censors since 2012.
The app was the only way China-based readers could access New York Times content, including articles translated into Mandarin, without having to use special software that is expensive for the average Chinese internet user and often unreliable.
At first glance, Apple had no choice but to comply with the Chinese government’s directive.
China’s smartphone market, the world’s largest, accounted for 20 per cent of its sales — or $8.8bn — in the third quarter of last year.
The California company’s supply chain is also deeply rooted in China.
When running at full tilt, an iPhone manufacturing facility operated by Foxconn in Zhengzhou, Henan province, can produce 1m handsets every two days.
The Chinese government’s leverage over Apple is enormous.
But so is Apple’s leverage over the Chinese government, should it be brave — and wise — enough to use it. 
At a time when Beijing is simultaneously attempting to spur slowing economic growth and halt capital outflows, it badly needs foreign investment and the jobs it creates. 
The iPhone manufacturing facility in Zhengzhou is a high-tech jewel in a relatively poor, inland province, otherwise blighted by twilight heavy industries and chronic pollution.
Foxconn also recently announced it would spend $8.8bn on a flat-panel display factory in the southern city of Guangzhou.
It may well be that Apple quietly fought the good fight before yielding to the authorities’ demand to pull an app that was allegedly “in violation of local regulations”.
But in confirming the decision, Apple could have at least specified what regulations the New York Times app had supposedly violated.
It did not and the lack of transparency surrounding the affair has only added to the Orwellian nature of Apple’s surrender. 
It is a disappointing outcome for a company whose remarkable run, from 1980s iconoclastic outsider to the world’s most valuable company 30 years later, began with such a bold statement.