Apple acquiesces to Chinese government's demands: NYT report

《紐約時報》報導：蘋果公司向中國政府的要求妥協

Electronics giant gives in to Beijing in order to continue operations in China


TAIPEI (Taiwan News) — Apple has given in to Beijing’s demands over the past few years in order to continue operations in China, according to a New York Times report.

The report listed five major things the electronics giant is doing to placate the communist nation — the first being that it stores customer data on Chinese government servers.

The NYT wrote that Apple had agreed to move its Chinese customers’ data onto computers owned and operated by a Chinese state-owned company in 2017. Security experts and Apple engineers said the move would make it almost impossible for the American company to stop Beijing from gaining access to the emails, photos, contacts, calendars, and location data of its Chinese customers.

However, Apple maintains that it has “never compromised the security of [its] users or their data in China or anywhere [they] operate.”

The NYT also stated that Apple shares customer data with the Chinese government. After moving data to China, the company entered into a legal arrangement with the Chinese authorities without breaking American laws. Apple designated Guizhou-Cloud Big Data (GCBD), a company owned by the Guizhou provincial government, as the legal owner of its Chinese customers’ iCloud data.

The two companies also reworded the Chinese iCloud terms and conditions to grant them “access to all data that you store on this service” and allowed the companies to share this data with each other, NYT said. The Chinese authorities can now demand customer data from GCBD instead of Apple.

The report pointed out that Apple also proactively removes apps to appease the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). Apple has created a system that rejects or removes apps the company believes could upset party officials, and it trains its app reviewers and uses special software to inspect apps for any mention of taboo topics such as Tiananmen Square, the Falun Gong, the Dalai Lama, Tibet, and Taiwan.

The NYT provided the example of Communist Party critic Guo Wenggui (郭文貴). In 2018, China’s internet regulators ordered Apple to reject an app created by Guo, a Chinese billionaire who has lambasted the CCP for corruption.

Apple subsequently added him to its “China sensitivities list,” which means software scans apps for any mention of him and that reviewers reject his apps, according to court documents.

When an app developed by Guo later made it past Apple’s reviewers and was published to the App Store, Chinese officials complained.

The company investigated the incident and later fired the reviewer who had approved the app. Apple said it had fired the employee for poor performance and that it had removed Mr. Guo’s app because it was illegal in China, according to the NYT.

The report then mentioned that 55,000 iPhone apps have disappeared in China since 2017. Though more than 35,000 of those have been games, the remaining 20,000 include foreign news outlets, gay dating services, and encrypted messaging apps.

Apple has also removed platforms for organizing pro-democracy protests and dodging internet restrictions.