A new book contending that Apple Inc went too far in consolidating its operations in China is prompting debate among analysts of the country – some of whom say the company may have had no realistic alternatives.
“If they were to have it to do over again, would they have done anything differently?” asked Meg Rithmire, a Harvard Business School professor, during an event Wednesday at the Centre for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington think tank.
Probably not, she said. There has been “this huge wave of innovation and production going on in China, and to miss out on that would be to not be the company that they are today”, Rithmire continued.
Apple in China: The Capture of the World’s Greatest Company, by business journalist Patrick McGee, explores Apple’s entry into China from the 1990s onwards.
It argues, in McGee’s words, that the iconic Silicon Valley company made the “rookie and calamitous mistake of consolidating all its eggs in one basket” and doubling down “when that basket turned out to be more of a ruthless, authoritarian surveillance state” than previously thought.
McGee, who covered Apple for the Financial Times, also argues that “China wouldn’t be China today without Apple” – a view that Rithmire partly challenged.
