3) The entire series of US media reports about Apple in China were political and commercial propaganda designed to (a) insulate American firms from foreign laws, and (b) create sufficient public pressure to ensure a foreign government designed its domestic laws to please the Americans.
Alibaba – Almost as big as China
In early 2021 we had a spate of articles about Alibaba’s unfortunate collision with Chinese financial authorities, resulting in the cancellation of the company’s imminent IPO and
Jack Ma being rather strongly reined in (slapped down, actually). (
4) The US media were unanimous in claiming China was severely restricting the activities of ‘technology companies’ (since Alibaba is widely seen as such), but it wasn’t Alibaba that was being harnessed. Jack Ma’s Ant Financial was being hugely expanded into an online under-the-radar banking institution hiding between the pages of an IT firm and thus bypassing all the country’s financial and banking regulations. This would be similar to EBay or Amazon suddenly opening the largest retail bank in the US, while flying the flag of a consumer goods market and subject to only those laws and regulations.