Apple can't leave China, with or without tariffs

DURING PRESIDENT DONALD Trump's first term, he famously toured a Texas factory and claimed credit for bringing Apple production back to America.

- Catherine Thorbecke Bloomberg

Except the plant had been running long before he took office. And it was an "unmitigated fiasco". Workers in China had to be flown in to help fix the mounting manufacturing issues encountered in the US heartland.

This telling anecdote from Apple in China, a gripping read by former Financial Times journalist Patrick McGee, shows how the tech giant became beholden to America's biggest geopolitical adversary. Up until this point, the book recounts how Apple flew engineers from California to China to train and collaborate with local workers to create its most iconic products. Now, it seems, the tables have irreversibly turned.

McGee argues that the technology transfer facilitated by Apple to China, via small decisions compounding over decades, ultimately made it the biggest corporate investor into Made in China 2025, President Xi Jinping's bold plan to end reliance on Western technology. "Here was America's most famous tech giant volunteering to play the role of Prometheus, handing the Chinese the gift of fire," McGee writes.