China worries about Apple's handling of Ukraine

HONG KONG - Extensive efforts by Apple and other Western tech companies to curtail their business with Russia over its invasion of Ukraine have raised a question for product users in China: Could the same thing happen there?

After President Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine on February 24th, Chinese consumers have been focused on Apple, which like Google, Microsoft and other tech giants moved quickly to curb its Russia business. In Asia, where long-standing tensions between China and the self-ruling island of Taiwan, Beijing claims as its territory, Russia has invaded Ukraine, as well as the global response. The Chinese leader Xi Jinping said that reunification with Taiwan is unavoidable and has not ruled out the use of force to achieve it, although the Taiwanese government says there is no signs of imminent attack.

Chinese officials reject any comparison between Ukraine and Taiwan, saying that Ukraine is only an independent country. Some online commenters in China criticized Apple's actions in Russia and said China should prepare itself for similar tactics, as social media is dominated by nationalist and pro-Russian sentiment.

When China decides to liberate Taiwan, who can guarantee that our iPhones won't be deactivated? One user asked on Zhihu, a Chinese social media platform similar to Quora.

Experts say it would be difficult for Apple to walk away from China, which is a critical manufacturing center for the company as well as its third-largest market after the United States and Europe.

Kendra Schaefer, head of tech research at Trivium, said it is a very different story than what is happening in Russia.

Schaefer pointed out that Chinese regulations require Apple and other companies to store Chinese customers information on servers inside the country.

Does pulling out of China mean that Apple loses all of its customer data and not only loses its customers? She said something.

Prior to the war in Ukraine, China was already pursuing a national strategy of tech independence, focusing on indigenous innovation and the recruitment of overseas talent. Xi stressed importance in recent years, as both the Trump and Biden administrations tightened U.S. restrictions on Chinese tech giants like Huawei and ZTE that they consider threats to national security.

The U.S. sanctions on Huawei and ZTE occurred during the Sino-U. Angela Zhang, director of the Center for Chinese Law at the University of Hong Kong, said that the S. trade war had already awakened Chinese policymakers about the importance of technological self-sufficiency.

It is possible that it will take decades for China to catch up with the United States and Taiwan in the manufacturing of semiconductors and other essential components of electronic devices.

She said it is very costly to achieve complete self sufficiency of many hardcore technologies, which involve a very long and complicated supply chain.

Russia's growing isolation from companies like Apple has added to calls for China's tech independence from the West, which is also referred to as the Great Decoupling. One commenter on Weibo, China's equivalent of Twitter, noted his reliance on Apple's cloud storage service.

If anything happens, a company like Apple would deactivate my phone and my data, he said.