“Apple in China” explains why a US-made iPhone is an embarrassingly naive strategy

“Apple in China” explains why a US-made iPhone is an embarrassingly naive strategy

Christian Zibreg ∙ May 16, 2025

The new “Apple in China” book dives deep into Apple’s vast supply chain network in China, arguing that a US-made iPhone is a naive strategy.

Written by investigative journalist Patrick McGee, “Apple in China: The Capture of the World’s Greatest Company (Apple Books, Amazon) argues that Apple is caught in the middle of a new Cold War between the United States, where it once had manufacturing plants, and China, where most of its products are now assembled.

“On the brink of bankruptcy in 1996, Apple adopted an outsourcing strategy,” reads the blurb. “By 2003 it was lured to China by the promise of affordable, ubiquitous labour. As the iPod and iPhone transformed Apple’s fortunes, their sophisticated production played a seminal role in financing, training, supervising and supplying Chinese manufacturers – skills Beijing is now weaponizing against the West.”

The “Apple in China” book explains why a US-made iPhone is a pure fantasy and a naive strategy

Based on more than 200 interviews with former Apple executives and engineers, the book dives deep into the dark history of how China captured Apple, setting the iPhone’s global domination within a fraught geopolitical context. In a statement to Vanity Fair, Apple said the book is “full of inaccuracies” and “untrue.”

Issie Lapowsky, writing for Vanity Fair:

The book tells the story of how Apple engineers cycled into and out of China, working hand-in-hand with suppliers to imagine new ways to manufacture whatever Apple’s acclaimed former chief design officer, Jony Ive, could dream up. McGee’s reporting shows how Apple’s false starts in manufacturing its products in other places—from the Czech Republic to California—led it to China. And he argues that Apple’s utter reliance on China made it vulnerable to President Xi’s threats, at times making the company’s leaders turn a blind eye to the country’s authoritarian tendencies.

Ben Lovey, over at 9to5Mac:

The company invested so much money and intensive training into Taiwanese and Chinese manufacturing plants that, in time, there was nowhere else its products could be made. McGee notes that while Apple makes much of its Made In India iPhones, the reality is that only final assembly is carried out in the country. Everything assembled originates elsewhere, and in most cases that’s Taiwan or China.

On the impact on the US economy:

That ability to conduct precision, quality manufacturing at unbeatable prices meant that China became an unstoppable production powerhouse. American companies simply couldn’t compete, and over time more and more US production moved to China. It wasn’t just Apple which was now completely dependent on China, but almost all other American companies too.

On the impact on the global economy:

Where consumers once faced a choice between quality western products, and cheap Chinese ones, Apple had taught the country how to make cheap, quality products. That meant that Chinese brands like Huawei started competing on the global market, including in the premium tiers once the preserve of the top western brands.

The book quotes Brady MacKay, the former US special agent who has witnessed China’s tactics against other companies. He said the Chinese government can inflict a lot of pain on Apple if it decides to. “They can lower the boom on you in a million different ways,” he said. “Like, raw materials- they can shut that off in a heartbeat,” he says. “Electricity—all of a sudden it’s only available four hours a day.”

404 Media recently ran an excellent write-up on this topic, titled “A ‘US-Made iPhone’ Is Pure Fantasy,” here’s an excerpt:

There is no universe in which Apple snaps its fingers and begins making the iPhone in the United States overnight. It could theoretically begin assembling them here, but even that is a years-long process made infinitely harder by the fact that, in Trump’s ideal world, every company would be reshoring American manufacturing at the same time, leading to supply chain issues, factory building issues, and exacerbating the already lacking American talent pool for high-tech manufacturing.

And this:

The truth is that, assembled in the United States or not, the iPhone is a truly international device that is full of components manufactured all over the world and materials mined from dozens of different countries. Apple has what is among the most complex supply chains that has ever been designed in human history, and it is not going to be able to completely change that supply chain anytime soon.

On that note, here’s a mocking AI-generated video out of China, depicting depressed American workers toiling in dingy factories, which went viral after the Trump administration pledged to bring factories back to the country.

“The army of millions and millions of people screwing in little, little screws to make iPhones, that kind of thing is going to come to America, it’s going to be automated, and the tradecraft of America is going to fix them, is going to work on them, there’s going to be mechanics, HVAC specialists, electricians,” US secretary of commerce Howard Lutnick recently told CBS’s Face the Nation.

“The tradecraft of America, the high school educated Americans, the core to our workforce is going to have the greatest resurgence of jobs in the history of America to work on these high tech factories which are all coming to America,” he added.

“Apple in China: The Capture of the World’s Greatest Company” is available on Apple Books and Amazon, which offers the Kindle, hardback and audiobook versions.

Tags Apple Book Books China iPhone Manufacturing Production
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