During a visit to Beijing on Saturday, President Tim Cook demonstrated his support for China as a market and assembly base, despite the growing tensions between the United States and the world’s second-largest economy regarding trade and technology.
“In China, we have a massive production network. In addition, we have a successful Application Store,” the Apple CEO was quoted as saying in China Day, a state-run newspaper.
Given the ongoing technology conflict between the US and China and reports that Apple is shifting its focus to India as a potential base for elective production, Cook’s visit has sparked controversy in some areas.
Cook had shared a picture of himself smiling with customers and employees at the Apple store in Sanlitun, a shopping district, on China’s Weibo, a website similar to Twitter for entertainment.
That post came just a day after the President of TikTok, Shou Zi Bite, was grilled in a five-hour hearing before a Legislative board in Washington. US lawmakers were persuaded that the Chinese-made web-based entertainment app. China’s state media rushed to hold onto the obvious difference between the two Presidents’ encounters.
“While Apple Chief was enthusiastically invited by individuals at its leading Chinese store, the President of TikTok was the target of attacks at the US hearing. This demonstrates that China is practicing fairness and deregulation, “a netizen was quoted as saying by the state-run Worldwide Times.
The Biden organization has demanded that the Chinese owners of TikTok sell their stake in the company or face a restriction from the United States, the most important market for the app. Thursday, China’s business service said that limiting TikTok’s offer would “truly harm” the trust of global financial backers in the US.
The popularity of TikTok and other Chinese applications has exacerbated US concerns regarding the organization’s data collection practices.
However, numerous researchers assert that Apple will likely continue to rely on China for a considerable amount of time even if it is able to diversify its product offering.
In a profit call the year before, Cook said that India was a “massively exciting business sector” and “a significant concentration” for Apple. He also said that the country had “areas of strength for extremely digits year over year,” which showed that the South Asian nation was getting more and more attention.
Even though tensions between the US and China are getting worse, some people think they could “decouple” the world’s two biggest economies. However, current data shows that their exchanges reached a record high in 2022.
According to actual data from the United States, bilateral trade in goods increased to $690.6 billion in 2017.
According to the US Department of Financial Investigation, imports of Chinese goods increased by $31.8 billion to $536.8 billion, while commodities to China increased by $2.4 billion to $153.8 billion.