Apple in China: The Capture of the World’s Greatest Company by Patrick McGee. The author, a Canadian journalist, has built a distinguished career writing for leading outlets including the Financial Times, Wall Street Journal, and New York Times. He also earned a Master of Arts in Global Diplomacy from the University of London, where his dissertation examined the U.S. military budget and strategic readiness.
In Apple in China, McGee presents not only the story of Apple’s rise but also a broader analysis of how foreign companies have operated in China. His central argument is that Apple’s deep integration with China created both extraordinary success and a dangerous dependency on an authoritarian state, leaving the company geopolitically vulnerable.
The book begins with Apple’s early innovations: the iMac, PowerBook, iPod, and eventually the iPhone. These products were admired not just for their design but also for the new methods of manufacturing they required. Apple’s Industrial Design team would specify ambitious product requirements, often demanding materials or techniques that did not yet exist. Engineers then had to invent entirely new industrial processes to make those designs possible. Scaling up production while maintaining quality posed another challenge, one ultimately handled by Apple’s Manufacturing & Operations team, which managed suppliers and logistics.
In its early years, Apple relied on manufacturers in Japan, Singapore, and South Korea. However, rising wages and limited capacity pushed the company to seek alternatives. Taiwan emerged as an ideal partner because of its highly skilled engineers. Yet as labor costs in Taiwan increased, Taiwanese contractors themselves looked to mainland China. Companies such as Foxconn led the shift, and Apple executives embraced the move, trusting Foxconn to manage large-scale, cost-efficient production.
For years, this partnership worked well and generated enormous profits. But tensions arose when Apple began selling products directly in China. The opening of an Apple Store in Beijing was disrupted by violence when organized groups tried to exploit shortages, hiring crowds to buy iPhones for resale at inflated prices. Another issue came from “gray market” iPhones: buyers would purchase subsidized devices in the U.S., unlock them, and resell them in China. Many of these phones malfunctioned after being tampered with, and Chinese customers flooded Apple Stores demanding replacements under the company’s global warranty. Apple tried offering free repairs instead, but this angered consumers further. The conflict escalated when President Xi Jinping criticized Apple’s treatment of Chinese customers. To resolve the situation, Apple issued a public apology and accepted stricter government demands, avoiding heavier penalties.
McGee also highlights the unintended consequences of Apple’s manufacturing strategy. By investing billions in training and advanced machinery for its Chinese contractors, Apple inadvertently accelerated China’s technological capabilities. The transfer of knowledge allowed Chinese firms to become competitors more quickly than Apple had expected, with copycat devices sometimes reaching the market within a year.
The book suggests that Apple, in its pursuit of the lowest production costs, played a crucial role in China’s transformation into a global powerhouse for advanced manufacturing. This trajectory aligns with Beijing’s Made in China 2025 initiative, a national strategy aimed at using subsidies and intellectual property acquisition to surpass Western technological industries.
For readers interested in the broader U.S.-China trade conflict, McGee’s book pairs well with Peter Navarro’s Death by China: Confronting the Dragon—A Global Call to Action. While Navarro writes from a policy and advocacy standpoint, McGee provides a deeply reported, case-specific account of how one iconic American company became entangled in China’s rise.