[Review] Apple in China - Is China Playing a Longer Game Than the US?

By: Patrick McGee

Published: 2025

448 Pages

Briefly, what is this book about?

How Apple went all in on China, not merely moving manufacturing there, but also educating their companies in, and co-developing with them, numerous advanced manufacturing techniques. These techniques then spread all throughout China. As such, Apple, far more than any other company, enabled China’s rise to be the world’s most sophisticated manufacturer. In effect they imported a super-charged industrial policy for China. This was bad enough, but the eventual result was that Apple is now utterly dependent on a capricious one-party state. 

What's the author's angle?

McGee is not entirely unsympathetic to Apple, but it’s also clear that he finds the consequences of their actions to be damaging, and, most of all, dumb.

Who should read this book?

If you’re interested in China, technology, the future, or competition then you should read this book.