Washington

"The point, however, isn’t to condemn Cook or Apple. It’s to convey the predicament they’re in. At the turn of the millennium, Washington made a bet on China—a bet that free trade would liberalize the country and perhaps catalyze the creation of the world’s biggest democracy. Instead, trade enriched China and empowered its rulers. Cook shouldn’t be blamed by politicians for enmeshing Apple’s operations in China two decades ago, but he has erred by doubling down over the past decade despite mounting evidence that Xi has been ramping up repression at home and taking a more combative stance in international affairs. “You can say that we read them wrong, that we misunderstood China. But Jack Ma read China wrong, too. Every entrepreneur read China wrong,” says a supply chain expert who has lived in the country. “You look at what Deng Xiaoping and Hu Jintao were promoting—the [business class] didn’t see this coming. Xi changed the game completely. He’s another Putin in the making.” This person adds, “Look, I’m not a Cook fan. But you have to be sympathetic. He didn’t know what he was dealing with. Nobody did.”"

"Washington immediately saw the plan as a rebuke of open markets and economic interdependence. “The program,” wrote the US Council on Foreign Relations, “aims to use government subsidies, mobilize state-owned enterprises, and pursue intellectual property acquisition to catch up with—and then surpass—Western technological prowess in advanced industries.” The Information Technology and Innovation Foundation, which counts Apple as a member, would later characterize the plan to Congress as “an aggressive by-hook-or-by-crook strategy that involves serially manipulating the marketplace and wantonly stealing and coercing transfer of American know-how.”"