I love the design of this book’s cover – the bitemark in Apple’s apple logo – replaced by a Chinese dragon. The artwork reinforces the overall narrative of the book, Apple in China: The Capture of the World’s Greatest Company, by Patrick McGee (copyright 2025).
In the author’s own words: “Apple in China tells a huge untold story – how Apple used China as a base from which to become the world’s most valuable company, and in doing so, bound it’s future inextricably to a ruthless authoritarian state.”
McGee does a good job of dividing the books 384 pages into forty-one digestible chapters. He covers Apple’s entire history, from its founding in a garage in 1976; to today’s Apple, with all its unanswered geopolitical questions, involving such things as tariffs and national security. McGee covers Apple’s near bankruptcy in 1996 and its subsequent market successes. He details how many of the various Apple products were designed, manufactured, and marketed over the years, mostly under the leadership of Steve Jobs and Tim Cook.
I especially enjoyed Chapter 14 (Flat-Out-Cool! – Making the iMac G4 Across Asia), because I still have a “sunflower inspired” iMac G4 in my study, with its monitor floating in the air, supported by a chrome neck made from aerospace grade 17-4 stainless steel. According to McGee, ten percent of the G4’s retail price went into manufacturing that stainless steel neck. I haven’t fired up my all-white iMac G4 in years, but I have kept it because I agree with the chapter’s title, that it is “flat-out-cool.” Steve Jobs would be pleased, I think.
In his book, McGee introduces the major personalities involved in the story, including Steve Jobs, Tim Cook, Terry Gou (the founder of Foxconn), and to a lesser extent Xi Jinping and Donald Trump. McGee tells his story from many different perspectives, including Apple’s suppliers, Apple’s competitors, and the Chinese masses. Foxconn, the largest maker of electronic components in the world, is a major part of Apple’s story. Over the years, Apple sent thousands of engineers to China to teach Foxconn how to automate and manufacture “the Apple-way,” while the governments of China (national and local) helped subsidize Foxconn.
In his book, McGee writes about the many Apple challenges in China, including the “yellow cows” (read the book), workforce churn, and how Apple has tip-toed around various human rights issues.
McGee also complements China on its ability to compress the 150-200 yearlong industrial revolutions – in England, the United States, and Japan – into only thirty years, without the various wars and misadventures that the former countries suffered. He also notes that the Chinese government’s greatest fear has historically been “revolution.”
McGee also writes about two other corporations (besides Foxconn) that are very much involved in the Apple story, Huawei (pronounced “Wah-way”) and TSMC, the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company.
McGee tells how Huawei overtook Apple in global phone sales in 2019 by competing in the top tier market. How serious were things?
In the author’s words: “Donald Trump had ascended to the US presidency threatening Apple; Instead, he saved it. In May 2019 the Trump administration alleged Huawei was a security threat .... imposed unprecedented sanctions, depriving Huawei of Google services, ... [and] also disallowed American companies from shipping fifth-generation cellular chips to the group. ... Apple was suddenly the only game in town for premium 5G phones.”
As regards TSMC, Apple started moving chip production to TSMC in 2020 (from the USA/Intel). Per McGee, TSMC soon manufactured 80 percent of the world’s most advanced chips, mostly in Taiwan, which is subject to earthquakes and is periodically threatened by the mainland. “Today the main ‘system on a chip’ in every iPhone, iPad, MacBook, desktop Mac, AirPod, and Apple Watch is being made on one small island.”
Warren Buffett, the ”Oracle of Omaha,” has noted the above risks, selling his stake in TSMC in 2023, and substantially reducing his stake in Apple during 2024 (from $178 to $69.9 billion).
As to the future, Apple’s challenge appears to be figuring out how to move a substantial portion of its production to India (with its cheap labor), while appeasing Trump, and not offending China – a tough challenge given that Huawei is back, and the many unknowns associated with AI, tariffs, and trade wars.
Another question that lingers is bigger than Apple. How should the US government interact with the “free-enterprise system” and its corporations – in a world where foreign governments own and/or subsidize their important industries. In the past these interactions have sometimes been adversarial (e.g., anti-trust laws). Likewise, our corporate culture (e.g., the focus on quarterly results) is not consistent with our national security interests (e.g., carrying inventories of rare earth minerals just in case).
A Personal Note
One of the reasons that I liked Apple in China was that I “lived” part of it. My first job, after graduating from college in 1970, with a degree in industrial engineering, was with Western Electric, the manufacturing arm of the Bell System.
On my first day (June 8, 1970) about 7700 people were employed at the Omaha Works. On that date the Omaha Works manufactured, among other things, the electro-mechanical switches and huge (e.g., 1800 copper wires) exchange cables that connected all the phones (just “landlines” then) in the world. The Omaha Works, at that time, had over two million square feet of manufacturing space, on forty plus acres, with a massive “front lawn” that stretched for a mile between 120th and 132nd streets.
The country was in a bit of “recession” in 1970, and the Omaha Works would start to shed employees about that time – a trend that would continue off and on until the plant closed completely. The three major buildings that were there when I started are still there; one has been turned into an indoor lumber yard. The L Street Marketplace (Sam’s Club, Walmart, Home Depot, Target, ...) now occupies the front lawn, along with the Omaha office of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. I seldom drive by there anymore; it makes me sad.
In his book, McGee writes of a phenomenon known as “contact manufacturing.” Foxconn was and is Apple’s go-to contract manufacturer. Foxconn’s story is a major part of Apple’s story and McGee’s book. As Western Electric morphed into Lucent Technologies and then Avaya, more and more of the Omaha Works manufactured products were also “outsourced” to contract manufacturers. Part of my job was to work with these suppliers on their “quality” issues.
When I worked for Lucent Technologies, it manufactured telephone switches in the United State and was the most widely held company in the country with 5.3 million shareholders. Lucent’s inability to compete with the before mentioned Huawei (along with its own ineptitude and mismanagement) ended the production of telephone switches in the US, as the remnants of Lucent were eventually absorbed by Alcatel (French) and Nokia (now Chinese owned). How do you think that impacts national security?
The Omaha Works never had a lot to do with China and globalization; but one engineer from Omaha traveled to China several times, in the early days, as an environmental health and safety specialist. He would return to Omaha and report on his visits (the trips to the Great Wall, pictures of streets teeming with bicycles). Our corporate intentions seemed to be benevolent – to help the Chinese join the developed world – and maybe buy some of our stuff along the way. China was interested in joint ventures and our intellectual property. We gave and they got.
To some extent, the demise of the Omaha Works, and my early retirement, was related to outsourcing, globalization, and a general undervaluing of manufacturing by corporate America. The biggest factors in my case, however, were technological in nature – transistors replaced mechanical switches and glass fiber replaced copper wires, requiring fewer people and less manufacturing space.
In Conclusion
Patrick McGee’s Apple in China: The Capture of the World’s Greatest Company is a good read. It is also a bit scary; all the geopolitical stuff involving China and Taiwan is scary. I give the book 5 stars (out of five). If you are interested in China and globalization, I also recommend House of Huawei, by Eva Dou.
Pictured below is my iMac G4. It took me a while to power it up today. I had to “Google” for help to find the power switch. If you can read the error message, you will note that I have some clock issues to resolve due to its inactive state. You can also see the beautiful but expensive chrome neck. I must admit that I never bought this computer. I am the third owner, receiving it for free when my son upgraded. It was his sister-in-law’s before then. I used it a bit for music but saved it primarily because of its good looks.
