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by bell-cot·4y ago·view on hn ↗
So...local politicians, in a market where Apple was making money hand-over-fist, were feeling kinda used. By a huge foreign corporation. And the they started getting sticky on all sorts of regulatory things that Apple needed. Until Apple's CEO promised to do a bunch of "local investing" in their country.

How different is this from the 1980's in the U.S., when Japanese auto makers decided that they needed to start building cars in America, and otherwise placating American politicians and voters with big piles of money?

5 comments
Apple paid protection money. Pretty simple, no need to sugar coat it
That I am aware of, "protection money" clearly implies that the payments are to a criminal organization - which is separate from, and unauthorized by, the established state. The MacRumors story seems very clear that Apple and Mr. Cook's deal was with the Chinese government, and the ruling Chinese Communist Party.

Do you have information to the contrary? Or is your point merely to voice anger at China, the CCP, Apple, and/or Mr. Cook?

> That I am aware of, "protection money" clearly implies that the payments are to a criminal organization - which is separate from, and unauthorized by, the established state.

The phrase is also very commonly used to refer to money paid to government officials who are corrupt. One could still quibble over whether this is technically “corruption” since it might very well be totally legal and encouraged under Chinese law, but I think the usage of the phrase here is quite suitable.

When politicians use their power to threaten and block access to markets, the behavior is no different from that of a criminal gang.

Using power to gain unfair advantage.

So yes, this is protection money / bribe.

> criminal organization - which is separate from, and unauthorized by, the established state

When the government of an established state violates human rights and international law (like the Geneva Convention), I don't think it's incorrect to call that government a criminal organization.

So the US is a criminal organization.
On what basis?
1. was done in secret

2. traded seemingly unrelated investments aka you can build your computers if you invest in our SAAS

3. technology transfer may be a violation of us export controls

Its really not obvious if the Chinese win because it's an extremely opaque way to choose winners and losers.

> 1. was done in secret

Was it? Reading the article, the only 'secret' component was the lobbying, which is obviously done behind closed doors. Everything else is public commitments and public statements - which makes sense, since they were trying to pour oil on troubled chinese waters.

FWIW, western media often suggests stuff is 'secret' in china, because they can't read chinese, and all those orientals are awfully mysterious.

It's effectively illegal* in china to write unapproved stories about any government official or department or policy. I think that's what people mean when they say government dealings are 'secret'.

* i.e. to be a journalist you have to go through intense ideological screening; extreme prohibitions on foreign journalists operating in china; complete prior restraint on ALL media (and all education, all printing presses, communication technology, etc.)

I guess I'd see it more as a continuation of the whole 'kremlinology' trope. Granted, access is difficult in China atm. On the other hand, most of the press doesn't like to do deep investigative journalism in any case, so when you put a few barriers in their way, they tend to get real lazy real fast.
> FWIW, western media often suggests stuff is 'secret' in china, because they can't read chinese, and all those orientals are awfully mysterious.

What English speaking media should one read to see this for themselves?

If you just check google news 'china secret' you can see an enormous number of articles, many from credible sources, talking about various 'secret' doings of the CCP.
>western media often suggests stuff is 'secret' in china, because they can't read chinese, and all those orientals are awfully mysterious.

this is stupid.

BBC Chinese (https://www.bbc.com/zhongwen/simp) have many Chinese/people who can speak/read/write Chinese.

large Western Media have Chinese staffs just like any large Chinese Media in China, HK or Taiwan with people capable of speak/read/write English.

Not arguing with your point, but it’s not uncommon that western media take a paragraph from Chinese gov docs out of context and call it clandestine despite it being merely formality
what was secret from whom? and why should they have been told?

*may be* a violation. or maybe not in violation.

Because now we're getting screwed. The concept of fairness is cold comfort.
Bribery is illegal, just ask FIFA and the FBI.
I didn't see any evidence of bribery. Please point that out.

Companies make investments in countries all the time for concessions on reduced taxes, streamlined approvals, etc... When Apple wanted to enter India's markets in a bigger way, they agreed to build a factory there. What is the difference? This is just how big business is done all over the world. I'm not making a judgement about whether this is good or bad, I just don't get all of the outrage and surprise over a process that is far from unusual.

> How different is this from the 1980's in the U.S.

Historians generally agree that Martina Navratilova was rightfully and lawfully detained for insulting the Republican party.

And that it was important for Toyota to comply with US lawful interception requirements for any communication in automobiles.

>Historians generally agree that Martina Navratilova was rightfully and lawfully detained for insulting the Republican party.<

What incident? What insult? What historians?

I've been trying to understand this comment for like half an hour, I think maybe the idea is to imagine 1980s America with a CCP-style government? So, Martina Navratilova was a prominent critic of the dominant political party in the 80s, and if she was in China that could have gotten her arrested, but she was in the US so she wasn't.

That's as far as I got, I can't figure out what point the comment is trying to make.

The question I was responding to was "how different is this from the 1980s in the US?"

A possible difference I was suggesting is that Apple is being required to do things such as storing data locally not only for business reasons related to local industry, as the parent post had suggested, but also to enable surveillance of political dissidents, suppression of criticism of the government, etc..

Perhaps I should have picked John McEnroe as he might be more recognizable, but as I understand it Navratilova was a women's tennis #1 in the 1980s who actually did criticize the Republican party (and the US government) so I thought it might be an interesting comparison.

> And that it was important for Toyota to comply with US lawful interception requirements for any communication in automobiles.

Are you just stringing random words together to create sentences?

No, but perhaps I can explain the analogy more directly:

The most likely driving reason for requiring Apple to maintain iCloud data in local datacenters in mainland China rather than offshore (as it had done previously) is to facilitate data access by local investigative authorities.