Last month, the Chinese edition of Apple in China, written by a former Financial Times reporter, was published and quickly climbed the bestseller charts, sparking considerable discussion.

In fact, when the English edition was released a few months earlier, I sent a text message to a former senior Foxconn executive whose name appears repeatedly in the book, asking whether he had read it.

Normally mild-mannered, he replied in English with an unusual hint of emotion, saying he had no intention of reading it at all, because the book was biased and had “reached its conclusions before doing the research.”

After carefully reading the Chinese edition, I understood why this close confidant of Terry Gou（郭台銘）felt that way.

The book primarily chronicles Apple’s decision-making process in shifting the production of iPhone-centric products to China.

This is a history I know well. When Steve Jobs unveiled the first iPhone in 2007, I was stationed in Shanghai. Over the following decade, tracking Apple and the smartphone supply chain across Taiwan and China became a central part of my reporting career.

For years, I have approached Apple from a bottom-up perspective, analyzing it through the lens of the supply chain.

Today, the English-speaking world finally has a top-down account—one that examines Apple’s supply chain from the vantage point of senior executives at its Cupertino headquarters down to its China-based procurement chiefs. The same historical events inevitably yield very different interpretations, and I found this perspective genuinely illuminating.

However, the book’s central argument—one that runs throughout the narrative and has been widely praised—claims that Apple injected capital, technical training, and management expertise into Chinese companies, inadvertently nurturing a complete indigenous Chinese electronics industry, which China then transformed into a competitive weapon capable of challenging the West.

I completely disagree.

I therefore intend to break this claim into three components and rebut them point by point:

1. Apple injected capital, technical training, and management expertise into Chinese companies.
2. Apple nurtured a complete indigenous Chinese electronics industry.
3. Apple’s supply chain became a competitive weapon enabling China to challenge the West.

Let us begin at the beginning.

(To read the analysis in full, visit the Tech Taiwan Substack)

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Uploaded by Ian Huang