Cook Turned American Apple into Chinese Apple
By: Dr Ping
Tags: Apple, Hong Kong, Communist China, Profit Over Human Rights, Tim Cook

(The original article in Chinese by Jie Yu was published on newtalk.tw on 10/23/2019. This English version was translated by Dr. Pingnan Shi)

After receiving fierce criticism from Chinese state media, Apple obediently removed the Hong Kong protest map app called HKmap.live, and was condemned by the world for putting its business interests in China above human rights.

The Wall Street Journal reported that Apple CEO Tim Cook’s prompt action of taking down the Beijing-opposed app may help avoid conflicting with the Chinese government and antagonizing a large number of Chinese consumers, but Apple may also face criticism from outside China. People in the free world believe that Apple has chosen to stand on the side of dictatorial Beijing in Hong Kong’s struggle for democracy.

American Apple? Chinese Apple?

Sometimes there is a conflict between the market and conscience and you can not have both. Republican Senator Josh Hawley of Missouri said on Twitter that Apple had assured him that the initial decision to ban HKmap.live from the App Store was a mistake. However, Apple eventually maintained that decision. The senator wrote: “It seems that Chinese censors talked to them after Apple assured me. Who is the real boss of Apple? Cook or Beijing?” This incident shows that Cook is just a puppet of Beijing. Apple has changed from “American Apple” to “Chinese Apple”, and its taste has completely changed.

Cook defended his company’s decision in an email to its employees, saying that the app was taken down due to illegal and malicious use. Since the death of its genius founder Steve Jobs, Apple has had no technical or artistic innovations. Cook, a professional operation manager with no creativity, simply follows Jobs’ policies and chases profits, leading Apple on an unstoppable downward slope. People with no talents and no virtues always need something else in order to decorate and puff up. For Cook, that includes the prestigious titles promised by the CCP.

Just after Cook faithfully carried out Beijing’s will and showed his loyalty to the Chinese government, he finally got his wish and became the new chairman of the advisory committee of the School of Economics and Management of Tsinghua University in Beijing. He presided over the October 18, 2019 meeting of the committee, saying that in the next three years, he would work with all the committee members to promote the college and strive to build it into a world-class school of economics and management — much like the official rhetoric of China’s Ministry of Education. Maybe the title of “chairman” is more prestigious than that of “chief executive”.

Cook strongly criticized the Hong Kong protest map app in order to secure the Chinese market

Cook’s argument in internal e-mails is inconsistent, fraudulent, and unjustifiable. Not all businessmen have no loyalty to their home countries, but there is a kind of profit-worshipping businessmen who do not. Cook is one of them. Not all businessmen lack basic values ​​and spiritual beliefs, but there is a kind of businessmen, reckless out of ignorance, who are willing to act as the accomplice of dictatorship and tyranny. Cook is one of them. He is no different from Ma Yun and Ma Huateng [1].

Cook’s explanation expands from three aspects, which is nonsense full of holes. First, he claims that this app allows everyone to report on police checkpoints, protest hotspots, and other information which then is displayed on a map. He admits that this by itself is “benign” information. However, Apple received “reliable information” that this app was being used “maliciously” to attack police. This argument is the same as the one used for the CCP’s policy of forcing supermarkets to remove kitchen knives from the shelf whenever there is a major celebration. Their rationale is that although the knives themselves are not problematic, some people may buy them to kill people; therefore stores are not allowed to sell them. Cook should know that Apple only provides a platform for the sale and use of apps. What consumers do with apps is their business. Apple cannot control how they are being used. Does Apple regard itself as an all-knowing Almighty God? What is benign or malicious should not be determined by Apple. Let us try Cook’s logic: Suppose some terrorists use Apple’s maps to launch attacks on the White House and the Pentagon, will Apple remove all map apps from the Apple Store? Isn’t this “stopping eating for fear of choking?” [2]

Second, Cook says in his email that his “reliable information” comes from “Hong Kong’s Cyber Security and Technology Crime Bureau (CSTCB) and Hong Kong users.” He claimed: “This app was maliciously used to track individual police officers, causing personal and property damage”. The so-called “reliable information” should be balanced and not rely solely on information from the Hong Kong police force, which has become a “black police.” [3] For the sake of ordinary Hong Kong users, shouldn’t Cook find out whether there are more people who support this app or oppose it? Without investigation, one has no right to speak. As a “technology control freak,” Cook did not conduct detailed research, but made a conclusion on a whim and became an “extra Hong Kong policeman.” Cook’s statement on the situation in Hong Kong is inconsistent with reality. It is a well-known fact that protestors have rarely committed violence against the police other than in self-defense, and the examples of violence (including torture, rape, and even murder) committed by the police against the protesters are endless.

Third, Cook claims that: “This usage makes this app violate Hong Kong law, and also violate our store policy of prohibiting personal harm.” Cook says in the end that the App Store aims to “provide every user a safe and secure place”, and that the decision to remove the app “protects our users to the greatest extent.” Cook here has distorted the intent of Hong Kong citizens developing and using this app: they simply mark the areas where Hong Kong police officers are deployed and active. Most people use this as a reference to avoid those places so they won’t become victims of the Hong Kong police’s indiscriminate brutality. Citizens are unarmed while the police are fully equipped. Why would the citizens antagonize such a strong enemy? Therefore, the removal of this app can only result in more rampant violence of the Hong Kong police against its citizens. Is this Apple’s approach to “maximize protection of our users”?

More importantly, Cook emphasized that by doing so, Apple is abiding by “Hong Kong law.” However, when Hong Kong law has been twisted into a tool for suppressing the democratic movement, should it be obeyed unconditionally? Laws implemented during a certain historical period and in a certain geographical area do not have the highest value and norm. Above them, there is the existence of Natural Law, which is what the German philosopher Kant said “the moral law in the stars in the sky and the hearts of people”. If we blindly accept that “bad laws are also laws” and “bad laws must also be obeyed”, then Gandhi, Martin Luther King, and others who practiced the non-violence and non-cooperation principle are all lawbreakers as well. According to Cook, he and Apple must help the unjust governments to send such offenders to prison.

Cook has turned the Apple Company of the United States into the Apple Company of the People’s Republic of China. This is the greatest achievement of his tenure. He has gained the vast Chinese market but lost his conscience and Apple’s corporate value.

[1] Both are famous Chinese businessmen who chose profit over social justice.

[2] A Chinese idiom which means you should not take food away from people just because they might get choked.

[3] Hong Kong slang which means policemen have become thugs.