âPhenomenalâŚa jaw-dropping book.â âJon Stewart, The Daily Show Named by The New York Times , The New Yorker , and Prospect magazine as a best book of the year, this âscrupulously reportedâ ( The New Yorker ) and âastonishingâ ( The Daily Telegraph , London ) book rivets with its portrayal of how Apple allowed itself to become dependent on China for a huge percentage of its manufacturing, making it vulnerable and unwittingly laying the groundwork for the Asian superpower to rival the US in technological expertise. After struggling to build products on three continents, Apple turned to Chinaâs seemingly endless supply of cheap labor. It soon deployed thousands of engineers, trained millions of workers, and invested hundreds of billions of dollars to create the most advanced global supply chain. These efforts fueled the iPhoneâs dominanceâbut also laid the foundation for a powerful, state-supported Chinese electronics industry. What began as a business decision evolved into a cautionary tale of global trade, tech rivalry, and national security. Without intending to, Apple helped Beijing acquire technological influence that could now be weaponizedâa central concern in the ongoing US-China tech war. Drawing on over two hundred interviews, Patrick McGee exposes never-before-reported details from Silicon Valley to Shenzhen: internal emails, secretive executive meetings, and overlooked voices inside the companyâs China operations. Youâll meet the âGang of Eightâ executives tasked with appeasing Beijing, a Mormon missionary who launched Apple retail in China, and a veteran whose dreams of improving factory conditions were crushed by both Appleâs demands and Xi Jinpingâs authoritarian crackdown. From Foxconn and Tim Cook to the Chinese Communist Party and Taiwan Semiconductor, this is a revelatory look at how Apple, in seeking efficiency, became entangled in the very politics it once claimed to challenge. For readers of Chip War , American Factory , and The Big Short , Apple in China is a searing examination of corporate power, Chinese nationalism, deglobalization, and the fragile relationship between Silicon Valley and the worldâs rising superpower.
